Science Could Be a Bright Spot in U.S.-China Relations
ChinaFile/Foreign Policy

The following is an excerpt from Jing Qian and Brendan Kelly's article co-published by ChinaFile and Foreign Policy. Jing is the Co-Founder and Managing Director of the Center for China Analysis, and Brendan is a Fellow on Chinese Economy and Technology at the Center for China Analysis.
Amid heightened U.S.-China strategic and technology competition, bilateral scientific collaboration has become increasingly challenging. China’s broad military-civil fusion and espionage efforts have heightened Washington’s concerns that any collaboration could be exploited to advance Beijing’s military development. China’s increasingly closed information environment has also exacerbated doubts around whether the results and benefits of collaboration will be properly shared.
In this environment, the renewal on Dec. 13 of the two countries’ long-standing science and technology agreement (STA) was an important step toward stabilizing the bilateral scientific relationship. While a lapse of the STA might have had modest immediate impact, prominent scientists noted that canceling the agreement would have sent a damaging signal. The recently amended STA, with added guardrails in place to address national security and reciprocity concerns, provides space for continued beneficial scientific cooperation with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) while also resisting pressure for decoupling.
The U.S.-PRC Agreement on Cooperation in Science and Technology, signed in 1979, was the first major agreement between the two countries after the normalization of diplomatic relations. Since that STA’s signing more than four decades ago, the two governments have renewed it roughly every five years, most recently during the first Trump administration, which added a new section to the agreement in an effort to strengthen intellectual property rights protections.
The 2024 changes to the STA strengthen researcher protections, reciprocity on data-sharing, and accountability for continued government-to-government scientific cooperation. The amended agreement embodies the outgoing Biden administration’s “de-risking” of relations with China. The goal was to set clear guardrails around science and technology cooperation, especially in areas that could aid China’s military, while not seeking to decouple scientific progress that could damage not only the United States’ research and innovation, but also the lives of its citizens. The revised STA is a good reminder that, with the right controls in place, scientific cooperation with China can still provide important benefits.
The STA does not mandate any cooperation. Instead, it is an umbrella agreement that sets consistent terms and protections for U.S. science agencies that pursue cooperative arrangements with their Chinese counterparts, such as joint projects or memorandums of understanding.