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RESEARCH ARTICLE

Analyzing China’s research collaboration with the
United States in high-impact and
high-technology research

Yongjun Zhu1

, Donghun Kim1

, Erjia Yan2

, Meen Chul Kim2

, and Guanqiu Qi3

1Department of Library and Information Science, Sungkyunkwan University, 25-2, Sungkyunkwan-ro, Jongno-gu,
Seoul, Republic of Korea
2College of Computing and Informatics, Drexel University, 3141 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA
3Department of International Logistics, Chung-Ang University, 84 Heukseok-ro, Dongjak-gu, Seoul, Republic of Korea

Keywords: China–United States relations, coauthorship, high-impact research, high-technology
research, research collaboration

ABSTRACT
This study investigates China’s international research collaboration with the United States
through a bibliometric analysis of coauthorship over time using historical research publication
data. We investigate from three perspectives: overall, high-impact, and high-technology
research collaborations using data from Web of Science (WoS), Nature Index, and
Technology Alert List maintained by the U.S. Department of State. The results show that the
United States is China’s largest research collaborator and that in all three aspects, China and
the United States are each other’s primary collaborators much of the time. From China’s
perspective, we have found weakening collaboration with the United States over the past
2 years. In terms of high-impact research collaboration, China has historically shared a higher
percentage of its research with the United States than vice versa. In terms of high-technology
research, the situation is reversed, with the United States sharing more. The percentage of the
United States’ high-technology research shared with China has been continuously increasing
over the past 10 years, while in China the percentage has been relatively stable.

INTRODUCTION

China has experienced rapid economic development in recent decades. During this develop-
ment, China has collaborated with the United States, building a number of partnerships in
many areas. Among them, the Fulbright project is perhaps the most representative in the area
of science and education. In 1945, Senator J. William Fulbright proposed the “Fulbright pro-
ject,” with the goal of promoting mutual understanding through educational exchange; China
was one of the first participating countries. Although the Fulbright Scholar Program has expe-
rienced multiple suspensions and restarts in China owing to political issues with the United
States (Infeld & Li, 2009), it has been an essential part of educational exchange between the
two countries. Another well-known program is the Scientific Cooperation Exchange Program
(SCEP), initiated by the Foreign Agricultural Service of the United States Department of
Agriculture. This program offers opportunities for US companies to initiate long-term cooper-
ation with Chinese companies to promote agricultural development and economic growth.
Since 1979, the program has facilitated exchanges for more than 3,000 participants on topics
including food safety and security, animal and plant health, and agricultural biotechnology

a n o p e n a c c e s s

j o u r n a l

Citation: Zhu, Y., Kim, D., Yan, E., Kim,
M. C., & Qi, G. (2020). Analyzing China’s
research collaboration with the United
States in high-impact and high-
technology research. Quantitative
Science Studies, 2(1), 363–375. https://
doi.org/10.1162/qss_a_00098

DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1162/qss_a_00098

Received: 26 March 2020
Accepted: 27 July 2020

Corresponding Author:
Guanqiu Qi
xiao20107@cau.ac.kr

Handling Editor:
Li Tang

Copyright: © 2020 Yongjun Zhu,
Donghun Kim, Erjia Yan, Meen Chul
Kim, and Guanqiu Qi. Published under
a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
International (CC BY 4.0) license.

The MIT Press

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Analyzing China’s research collaboration with the United States

and emerging technologies (Foreign Agricultural Service, 2020). These programs enable edu-
cators, researchers, professionals, and students from the two countries to study, teach, and
research in each other’s countries. In turn, this has created many opportunities for the two
countries to exchange knowledge and collaborate on research.

The partnership between the two countries experienced ups and downs in the second half
of the 20th century, and in the 21st century, economic, diplomatic, and political issues have
arisen that could affect the two countries’ normal relationship. In 2008, China established the
“Thousand Talents Plan” to recruit international lead experts in research, innovation, and en-
trepreneurship (Zweig & Wang, 2013). The plan has brought more than 7,000 scientists and
researchers of diverse fields to China over the past 10 years (Jia, 2018), mostly from the United
States. Consequently, the US National Intelligence Council has raised concerns about technol-
ogy transfer (Postiglione & Simon, 2018). In 2017, the United States Trade Representative ini-
tiated an investigation of China under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 to determine “any
unreasonable acts, policies, and practices of China related to technology transfer, intellectual
property, and innovation” (United States Trade Representative, 2017). Beginning with this in-
vestigation, several issues have arisen between the two countries. In 2018, the Trump admin-
istration announced a series of plans to impose tariffs on Chinese imports in response to the
results of an investigation concluding that China had stolen US intellectual property
(Diamond, 2018). In May 2018, the Trump administration announced a limit on the validity
of visas issued to Chinese graduate students: Chinese students in STEM-related fields would
only be able to obtain 1-year visas (Postiglione & Simon, 2018).

The ongoing trade war between China and the United States and a series of related issues
pose potential threats to collaboration between the two countries. Specifically, the enduring
scientific collaboration between the two countries is likely to be affected. Against this back-
ground, we aim in this study to explore research collaboration between the two countries
through bibliometric analysis of coauthored publications. We analyze historical research
publication data and investigate collaboration over time. The goal is to understand any changes
and trends in research collaboration from three perspectives: overall, high-impact, and high-
technology research collaborations. We intend to test the following three hypotheses.

1. Collaboration patterns change along with countries’ changing economic powers. With
the growth of China’s economic power, its collaborators and its importance to other
countries as a collaborator also change.

2. Collaborations in high-impact research, defined as research that is featured in renowned
publication venues, exhibit different patterns from overall collaborations. High-impact
research has a different set of expertise and resource requirements and may warrant
different collaborative norms.

3. Collaborations in high-technology areas, characterized as highly protected, sensitive re-
search areas that are of national interest, are the most susceptible to international relation
disputes. Three high-technology areas are selected in this paper: nuclear science and tech-
nology; remote sensing; and robotics. Even given the promotion of country-level collab-
oration, collaborations in high-technology areas are often seen as delicate and cautious.

2. LITERATURE REVIEW

Research collaboration is a common endeavor that plays many positive roles in the scientific
community. Studies have reported that research collaboration results in higher scientific

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Analyzing China’s research collaboration with the United States

quality (Melin, 2000), improved research productivity (Lee & Bozeman, 2005), and increased
financial support (Beaudry & Allaoui, 2012; Heffner, 1981). Katz and Martin (1997) summa-
rized different levels of research collaboration, ranging from the individual to the international
level. Although research collaboration does not necessarily lead to coauthored papers, bib-
liometric analysis of coauthorship has been widely used as an approach to understanding
research collaboration (Subramanyam, 1983). Different levels of research collaboration can
be analyzed by aggregating coauthorship data at different levels (Melin & Persson, 1996). For
literature on research collaboration at the individual level, readers can refer to Bozeman and
colleagues’ work (Bozeman, Fay, & Slade, 2013), in which they systematically organize rel-
evant studies and discuss them extensively.

International collaboration is a widely studied topic within the scientific community (Frame
& Carpenter, 1979). Scientific articles by authors from two or more countries have been used
to measure international collaboration (Luukkonen, Tijssen et al., 1993). Researchers have
studied international collaboration from diverse perspectives, including factors affecting col-
laboration (Jeong, Choi, & Kim, 2013; Stead & Harrington, 2000); patterns of collaboration
(Coccia & Wang, 2016; Kim, 2006); strategies of promoting collaboration (Bagshaw, Lepp,
& Zorn, 2007); spatial characteristics of collaboration (Hoekman, Frenken, & Tijssen, 2010;
Ponds, Van Oort, & Frenken, 2007); impacts of international mobility on collaboration
(Jonkers & Tijssen, 2008); and gender differences in collaboration (Abramo, D’Angelo, &
Murgia, 2013).

Plenty of studies have focused on the international collaboration of individual countries or
regions such as the United States (Luo, Flynn et al., 2011), Europe (Thijs & Glänzel, 2010),
Korea (Kim, 2005), Vietnam (Nguyen, Ho-Le, & Le, 2017), Malaysia (Yu, Wah et al., 2013),
Iran (Hayati & Didegah, 2010), and Africa (Adams, Gurney et al., 2014; Mêgnigbêto, 2013).
Among them, China (Zheng, Zhao et al., 2012) is one of the most studied countries. China’s
international research collaboration has been studied with respect to its collaborative relation-
ships with the Group of Seven (G7) nations (He, 2009), the United States (Tang, 2013; Tang &
Shapira, 2011), Germany (Zhou & Bornmann, 2015), Australia (Niu, 2014), and overseas in-
stitutions (Wang, Xu et al., 2013). These studies identified China’s major collaborators and
explored collaboration patterns. Tang and Shapira (2011), analyzing patterns and dynamics
of China–US collaboration in nanotechnology, found that the United States is China’s largest
research collaborator in this field, which has helped China to grow in traditional fields as well
as expand research territory to the emerging field of nanotechnology research. In a later study,
Tang (2013) found that only elite Chinese scientists in the nanotechnology field tend to col-
laborate with researchers from the United States, yielding a positive effect on China’s research
quality.

Many research fields have been studied, including nanotechnology (Wang, Xu et al.,
2012), physics (Zhou & Lv, 2015), and energy (Wan & Craig, 2013). The focus of this study
differs from previous studies in the following respects: The study aims to analyze patterns in
China–US collaboration in a reciprocal manner—from the points of view of China and the
United States, respectively; in addition to overall collaboration, the study also aims to explore
collaboration specifically in high-impact and high-technology research; 3) all the above pat-
terns are explored over time to understand any changing patterns.

3. DATA AND METHODS

Research publication data were retrieved from the WoS Core Collection. Only journal ar-
ticles (i.e., articles and reviews) were retrieved and conference proceedings were not

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Analyzing China’s research collaboration with the United States

included in the analyses. We combined field tags available in the Advanced Search to iden-
tify a research article’s information, including publication year, publication name ( journal
name), country, and WoS Category. For example, we retrieved all research articles written
by researchers affiliated with Chinese organizations by using the query “PY=2018 AND
CU=(PEOPLES R CHINA)”. We retrieved all the research publications published between
1999 and 2018 by Chinese and US organizations and used the “Analyze Results” function
to get intermediate data, which were then downloaded to local computers for analysis and
visualization. Collaboration was measured on the basis of research articles, specifically, the
addresses field of author information. If a research article’s addresses field includes ad-
dresses of two or more countries, the collaboration counts of all the country pairs increase
by one. This includes the case in which an author has addresses of two or more countries.

We investigated China’s international research collaboration based on the following three

aspects.

(cid:129) International research collaboration for China. We analyzed all Chinese research arti-
cles included in the WoS Core Collection to identify major collaborators with China and
changes over time in collaborative relationships. We aimed to obtain an overview of
China’s overall international research collaboration.

(cid:129) International collaboration for China in high-impact research, defined as research arti-
cles published in 82 high-impact science journals compiled by Nature Research (spe-
cifically, the latest version of Nature Index available as of March 2019). We analyzed
China’s research publications in 82 journals to determine the country’s performance in
high-impact research and its collaboration with other countries. By fixing the number of
journals, the total number of published articles remained relatively stable, which was
beneficial for identifying true high-impact research, avoiding artifacts such as apparently
increased performance in high-impact research caused by the increasing total number
of journals.

(cid:129) International collaboration for China in high-technology research, defined as research in
fields identified in the Technology Alert List maintained by the U.S. Department of State
(Goklany & Trewavas, 2003; Li & Stodolska, 2006). Considering exact matches between
fields in the list and Wos categories, we selected three fields, namely Nuclear Science
and Technology; Remote Sensing; and Robotics. We analyzed collaboration in high-
technology research because we hypothesized that collaborations in high-technology areas
are the most susceptible to policy disputes. Considering recent issues of technology transfer
between the two countries, we believe the two countries’ collaboration in high-technology
research could be affected.

4. RESULTS

4.1.

International Research Collaboration for China

Figure 1 shows international research collaboration involving China over the latest 20 years.
Yearly percentages of collaborative work between China and other countries in China’s over-
all research work are shown. Six countries appeared as China’s top five research collaborators
over the latest 20 years: the United States, Australia, England, Canada, Germany, and Japan. In
2018, China collaborated with the United States in more than 12% of its research work. We
fitted a linear regression line for collaboration with the United States based on the data from
1999 to 2016. The linear regression line has an R2 value of 0.87, representing small differences

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Figure 1.

International research collaboration for China (1999–2018).

between actual and predicted values. The actual values between 2004 and 2009 are smaller
than the predicted values, while for the other years before 2016, the predicted values are
slightly higher. The predicted values for 2017 and 2018 are 12.6099 and 12.8762, respec-
tively. Compared with the actual values of 12.618 and 12.308, respectively, we find that in
2017, the predicted value was on par with the actual value, and in 2018, the actual value was
smaller than the predicted value. In fact, the 2018 value was also smaller than that of 2017.
The results suggest that collaboration in the past 2 years has been slipping.

Figure 2 shows temporal changes in collaborative ranks for each specific country, mea-
sured by the volume of coauthored research articles between the country and each of the
collaborators. For example, in 2018, China’s top five collaborators, sorted by the volume of
their co-authored research articles with China, were the United States, Australia, England,
Canada, and Germany. However, in 2009, the list was occupied by the United States,
Japan, Canada, England, and Germany. China’s top five collaborator list has been relatively
stable in recent years.

There are a few notable points worth discussing.

The United States has always been China’s largest collaborator, and China has been the
United States’ largest collaborator since 2011. The United States also appears to be the largest
collaborator for the other examined countries ( Japan, Germany, Canada, England, and
Australia). This pattern shows a steady and close collaborative relationship between China
and the United States, which also shares other major collaborators, such as England,
Germany, and Canada. While France has been collaborating steadily with the United
States, that country does not have a strong collaborative relationship with China.

Japan used to be a strong collaborator for China, second only to the United States for many
years. However, Japan began to lose its status as one of China’s strongest collaborators in 2013
and was no longer one of China’s top five collaborators in 2015. Nevertheless, from the

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Analyzing China’s research collaboration with the United States

Figure 2.

International research collaboration for China, United States, Australia, England, Canada, Germany, and Japan (2009–2018).

perspective of Japan, China has always been the country’s second-largest collaborator over the
past 10 years.

Australia appeared on China’s top five collaborator list in 2011, and after 2 years became
China’s second-largest collaborator. China has been a strong collaborator for Australia over
the past 10 years, with a change in rank from three to two in 2017.

China has maintained close collaborative relationships with England and Germany.
England has been China’s third-largest collaborator for the past 9 years, while Germany
has been China’s fifth-largest collaborator for many years. These two countries have collab-
orated extensively over the years, with each being the other’s second-largest collaborator at
various times. However, China has not been a major collaborator for either for a long time. In
2017 and 2018, however, China was one of England’s top five collaborators. Whether a sim-
ilar trend will appear between China and Germany is worth keeping an eye on. England and
Germany have also closely collaborated with other European countries such as France, Italy,
Switzerland, the Netherlands, and Scotland, which are not China’s strong collaborators.

Although there have been changes in rank, Canada has been on China’s top five collabo-
rator list for many years and has been its fourth-largest collaborator since 2015. China has
steadily improved its status as one of Canada’s top five collaborators, from fifth in 2009 to
fourth in 2013, to third in 2014, and finally to second in 2018.

4.2.

International Collaboration for China in High-Impact Research

Figure 3 shows international collaboration in high-impact research for China over the past 20
years. Research articles published in 82 high-impact science journals compiled by Nature
Research (specifically, the latest version of Nature Index available as of March 2019) between
1999 and 2018 were considered. In 1999, China published 949 articles in Nature Index jour-
nals, and the size has grown exponentially to 17,044 in 2018. Seven major collaborators in
China’s high-impact research are shown in Figure 3 with the volume of journal articles on

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Analyzing China’s research collaboration with the United States

Figure 3.

International collaboration for China in high-impact research (1999–2018).

which they have collaborated. Countries that have appeared on China’s top five collaborator
list in high-impact research more than once were selected as China’s major collaborators.

In high-impact research, the United States is again China’s largest collaborator, as mani-
fested by its volume of collaborative work and share of China’s overall collaboration (Table 1).
In 1999, 20.4% of China’s high-impact research publications were with the United States, and
the percentage went up to 31.3% in 2018. Since 2009, China has been one of the United
States’ top five collaborators in high-impact research and became its largest collaborator
in 2014 (Table 2). In 2018, China collaborated with the United States on approximately
one-third of its high-impact work, while approximately 16% of the United States’ high-impact

Table 1.

International collaboration for China in high-impact research (2009–2018)

Total publications
17,044

Publications with US
5,339

Percentage
31.325

Rank of US
1

14,455

12,696

11,925

11,226

9,654

8,658

7,639

6,609

5,779

4,736

4,082

3,841

3,413

2,959

2,743

2,178

1,764

1,516

32.764

32.152

32.21

30.403

30.651

31.682

28.512

26.691

26.233

Year
2018

2017

2016

2015

2014

2013

2012

2011

2010

2009

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Analyzing China’s research collaboration with the United States

Table 2.

International collaboration for United States in high-impact research (2009–2018)

Year
2018

2017

2016

2015

2014

2013

2012

2011

2010

2009

Total publications
34,043

Publications with China
5,339

Percentage
15.683

Rank of China
1

33,671

33,642

37,836

37,042

36,077

37,753

36,429

32,823

36,182

4,736

4,082

3,841

3,413

2,959

2,743

2,178

1,764

1,516

14.066

12.134

10.152

9.214

8.202

7.266

5.979

5.374

4.19

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work was with China. This confirms again the two countries’ strong collaborative relationship,
not only in overall research but also in high-impact research.

Following the United States, Germany has been China’s second-largest collaborator. China
has collaborated with Germany more closely in high-impact research than in overall research,
where Germany was China’s fifth-largest collaborator. In 2018, England was China’s third-
largest collaborator, constituting 6.9% of China’s high-impact work, following Germany’s 8.6%.

Japan, Australia, and Canada were also major collaborators for China. Australia and Canada
have both steadily increased their percentages from 1.5% and 2.4% in 1999 to 5.1% and 4.0%
in 2018, respectively. Japan’s percentage, on the other hand, shrank from 67.0% in 1999 to
5.2% in 2018. France, while not on China’s top five collaborator list in terms of overall research
collaboration, has been included in the counterpart list in high-impact research for many years.

4.3.

International Collaboration for China in High-Technology Research

Nuclear Science and Technology, Remote Sensing, and Robotics were selected from the WoS
categories, and research articles published under these three categories were analyzed.
Table 3 shows levels of international collaboration in high-technology research for China.
There has been rapid growth in high-technology research in China, from 979 articles in
2009 to 5,546 articles in 2018. In high-technology research, the United States is again
China’s largest collaborator. Each year, more than 10% of China’s high-technology research
articles are copublished with the United States. Despite increased overall collaboration be-
tween China and the United States, from China’s perspective, collaboration in high-technology
research has remained at a stable level for the past 10 years, generally at a level of 12–13%. Of
note is that the two countries’ collaboration in percentage terms recorded its highest point in
2015 (14%) and has slipped over the past 3 years. Countries such as Canada, Germany,
England, Japan, Australia, and France were also major collaborators, although percentages
were generally under 4%. In the early years of this survey, China collaborated with Japan
on approximately 5% of its high-technology research articles; however, the percentage has
dropped to 2% in recent years.

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Table 3.

International collaboration for China in high-technology research (2009–2018)

Total publications
5,546

Top 1
US (13.2%)

Top 2
GERMANY (3.2%)

Top 3
CANADA (2.6%)

Top 4
ENGLAND (2.5%)

Top 5
AUSTRALIA (2.1%)

4,740

3,927

3,583

3,038

2,328

1,639

1,402

1,210

979

US (13.0%)

CANADA (2.9%)

GERMANY (2.6%)

JAPAN (2.2%)

AUSTRALIA (2.1%)

US (13.5%)

CANADA (2.7%)

ENGLAND (2.5%)

AUSTRALIA (2.5%)

GERMANY (2.4%)

US (14.0%)

JAPAN (3.0%)

FRANCE (2.7%)

CANADA (2.3%)

AUSTRALIA (2.2%)

US (13.2%)

FRANCE (3.0%)

CANADA (2.8%)

JAPAN (2.8%)

GERMANY (2.7%)

US (13.0%)

GERMANY (3.2%)

FRANCE (3.1%)

JAPAN (3.1%)

CANADA (2.5%)

US (12.9%)

JAPAN (3.3%)

CANADA (3.0%)

GERMANY (2.5%)

ENGLAND (1.8%)

US (13.3%)

JAPAN (5.3%)

CANADA (3.5%)

GERMANY (3.3%)

FRANCE (2.9%)

US (12.4%)

JAPAN (4.5%)

CANADA (3.1%)

FRANCE (2.8%)

GERMANY (2.7%)

US (11.0%)

JAPAN (4.6%)

GERMANY (3.4%)

CANADA (3.1%)

FRANCE (3.0%)

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The United States has been another key contributor to high-technology research, typically
publishing more than 3,000 articles per year (Table 4). Prior to 2016, the United States pub-
lished more high-technology research articles than China each year. Since 2016, the situation
has reversed, and in 2018, China produced approximately 1,000 more research articles than
the United States in high-technology research. China has been the United States’ largest col-
laborator since 2010. The percentage of the United States’ high-technology work with China
has increased steadily each year from 3.5% in 2009 to 16.9% in 2018. Compared with the
percentages from China’s perspective, which have been stable over the past 10 years, from the
US perspective they have been increasing every year. This may partly explain the background
of the Technology Alert List.

Table 4.

International collaboration for the United States in high-technology research (2009–2018)

Total publications
4,310

Top 1

CHINA (16.9%)

Top 2
GERMANY (4.5%)

Top 3

FRANCE (4.0%)

Top 4
CANADA (3.7%)

Top 5

ITALY (3.6%)

4,048

3,852

3,673

3,398

3,560

2,828

3,313

2,549

3,087

CHINA (15.2%)

GERMANY (4.9%)

ENGLAND (4.1%)

FRANCE (4.1%)

ITALY (3.9%)

CHINA (13.8%)

GERMANY (5.0%)

FRANCE (4.2%)

ITALY (3.8%)

CANADA (3.6%)

CHINA (13.7%)

GERMANY (4.7%)

ENGLAND (3.6%)

FRANCE (3.3%)

CANADA (3.3%)

CHINA (11.8%)

GERMANY (5.1%)

FRANCE (4.5%)

ITALY (3.7%)

JAPAN (3.6%)

CHINA (8.5%)

GERMANY (5.4%)

FRANCE (4.9%)

ITALY (4.2%)

JAPAN (3.2%)

CHINA (7.5%)

GERMANY (4.6%)

FRANCE (4.0%)

ITALY (3.5%)

JAPAN (3.0%)

CHINA (5.6%)

GERMANY (5.1%)

FRANCE (4.4%)

JAPAN (4.3%)

ITALY (4.0%)

CHINA (5.9%)

GERMANY (4.4%)

FRANCE (4.1%)

ITALY (3.7%)

JAPAN (3.5%)

GERMANY (4.6%)

FRANCE (4.4%)

ITALY (4.4%)

JAPAN (3.8%)

CHINA (3.5%)

Year
2018

2017

2016

2015

2014

2013

2012

2011

2010

2009

Year
2018

2017

2016

2015

2014

2013

2012

2011

2010

2009

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5. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS
In this study, we investigated China’s international research collaboration from three perspec-
tives: overall, high-impact, and high-technology research. Overall, the United States,
Australia, England, Germany, Canada, Japan, and France were major collaborators with
China. In terms of overall research collaboration, China has maintained reciprocally close re-
lationships with North America and Australia, while with European countries (England and
Germany), collaborative relationships seem to be one-way based on the collected data.
This is explained by the fact that China has not featured on England and Germany’s top five
collaborator lists for a long time. However, we witnessed a change over time, with China be-
coming one of England’s top five collaborators in 2007. This trend is worth investigating when
subsequent data becomes available. In high-impact research, a strong collaborative relation-
ship between China and the United States was shown again. In 2018, China shared 31% of its
high-impact research work with the United States, and the United States collaborated on 16%
of its high-impact work with China. The relationship has become increasingly close, and we
expect this trend to continue. Japan has been China’s close collaborator for many years, al-
though in recent years, China has collaborated more with Germany and England than with
Japan. In high-technology research, more than 13% of China’s research articles in 2018 were
published with the United States, and the United States collaborated on 17% of its high-
technology work with China.

This paper produced the following findings. From the Chinese perspective, in terms of over-
all research collaboration between China and the United States, the actual value (percentage)
is smaller than the predicted value in 2018; in high-impact research, the percentage in 2018 is
smaller than in 2015, 2016, or 2017; and in high-technology research, the percentage has
been decreasing since 2016. However, from the perspective of the United States, we did
not find such phenomena. China has been playing a continuously increasing role in the
United States’ high-impact and high-technology research. This demonstrates the difference be-
tween analyzing collaboration from China’s perspective and that of the United States.

In terms of high-impact research collaboration, China shared a larger percentage of its re-
search with the United States than vice versa (31% vs. 16%). However, in high-technology
research, the situation is reversed, with the United States sharing more (13% for China vs.
17% for the United States). This may be partially attributed to the Technology Alert List.

The percentage of the United States’ high-technology research with China has been con-
tinuously increasing, from 4.6% in 2009 to 16.9% in 2018. However, in China, the percentage
has been relatively stable over the past 10 years, remaining at the 12–13% level. It seems that
there is an invisible barrier for Chinese researchers to collaborate with US researchers in the
selected high-technology areas. This is a significant finding, considering that collaborations
between the two countries in all other areas are rapidly increasing.

The three hypotheses are all supported.

With the growth of China’s economic power, some of its major collaborators’ statuses have
changed, manifested by the rise of Australia and the fall of Japan as collaborators. China’s col-
laborative status with other countries has also changed. Its importance as a collaborator with the
United States, Australia, England, and Canada has strengthened over the past 10 years.

Collaborations in high-impact research exhibit different patterns from overall collabora-
tions. China collaborates with the United States more intensively in high-impact than in overall
research (31.3% vs. 12.3% in 2018). In addition, China collaborates with certain countries
such as Germany and France more intensively in high-impact than in overall research.

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Collaborations in high-technology research are the most susceptible to international ten-
sions. While we identified a slightly decreasing trend of collaboration between the two coun-
tries in terms of overall and high-impact research in 2018, a similar trend was seen as early as
2016 in high-technology research.

The study used research publications as a proxy for measuring research collaboration, yet
research collaboration does not necessarily link to research publications, and therefore we
should interpret the results with caution. For example, research collaboration could be measured
using patent data as well. In addition, only journal articles have been explored in the study, and
we expect that analysis of other forms of research publications, such as conference papers, will
broaden our understanding. In terms of counting the number of collaborative works among coun-
tries, we used the raw count without considering the number of authors that belong to specific
countries in a publication. For example, if a journal article is written by researchers of two coun-
tries (no matter how many researchers belong to each country), the two countries’ collaborative
work increases by 1. However, some weighting mechanisms may be applied to measure the
intensity of collaboration more accurately. We used the country classification mechanism used
in WoS, in which the United Kingdom is represented by its constituent countries. Our analysis
was based on this mechanism without further data integration. In terms of defining high-impact
and high-technology research, we used Nature Index and the Technology Alert List respectively,
and the two sources may not fully represent these categories. In addition, to perform exact
matches between the fields in the Technology Alert List and WoS categories and eliminate
uncertainties, some disciplines in the Technology Alert List were not considered.

International issues between China and the United States motivated us to investigate research
collaboration between the two countries. We have identified several changes and trends in
China’s international research collaboration with the United States and other countries. From
the results, we did not find any specific signal showing any impacts of the ongoing international
tensions between the two countries on their research collaboration. However, we do not con-
clude that the two countries’ research collaboration has been unaffected, given that academic
publishing is a long process and may not reflect the impacts in a timely way. Chinese students
and researchers in the United States who have steadily been contributing to the two countries’
collaboration may be one of the factors in us not seeing a trend of diminishing collaboration.
Regardless of recent issues between the two countries, in the long term, China and the United
States have steadily been improving their relationship in scientific research, which may be a sign
of the two countries’ intentions to continue collaborating in their research.

AUTHOR CONTRIBUTIONS
Yongjun Zhu: Conceptualization, Methodology, Writing—original draft, Writing—review & editing.
Donghun Kim: Investigation, Visualization, Writing—original draft. Erjia Yan: Conceptualization,
Writing—original draft. Meen Chul Kim: Visualization, Writing—original draft. Guanqiu Qi:
Project administration, Writing—original draft, Writing—review & editing.

COMPETING INTERESTS

The authors have no competing interests.

FUNDING INFORMATION

This research was supported by the MSIT (Ministry of Science and ICT), Korea, under the ICT
Creative Consilience program (IITP-2020-0-01821) supervised by the IITP (Institute for Information
& Communications Technology Planning & Evaluation).

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DATA AVAILABILITY

Access to the data used in this paper requires a subscription to the WoS Core Collection.

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