Australian research collaboration with China in freefall

Australian researchers are turning their backs on the nation that produces the biggest share of the world’s most highly cited journal articles, with the proportion of funded research projects involving Chinese collaborators halving since 2019.

An analysis suggests that China has lost its position as one of Australia’s top international research partners amid concerns that the relationship is facilitating unsavoury science, foreign interference and intellectual property theft.

Australia’s top research universities received funding for an average of five projects involving Chinese partners in 2022, down from 14 in 2019. In fields where China has noted expertise, such as materials science and civil engineering, grants for projects with Chinese collaborators tumbled from about a dozen to one or none.

The Australian Research Council (ARC) now bankrolls more collaborative projects with New Zealand, ranked 43rd on its contribution to the global pool of the most-cited research articles, than with first-ranked China.

The report, by the Australia-China Relations Institute at the University of Technology Sydney, analyses data from the ARC’s Discovery Projects, Future Fellowships and Discovery Early Career Researcher Award schemes. It attributes the downturn in Chinese partnerships to a “bottom-up” process – rather than “top-down” government directives – in an environment of “extremely low success rates” for funding applications.

“Universities and their researchers now appear to be absorbing a message from the Australian government that collaboration with the PRC is less desirable than previously, and responding by putting up fewer proposals that nominate PRC-based partners,” the report says.

The report acknowledges “legitimate concerns” in the research relationship, including “obfuscation” of Chinese institutions’ activities and the potential for well-intentioned research to be used for malicious ends, but says “there is no national interest benefit from overstating the threats”.

“Addressing these legitimate concerns is best achieved through targeted measures, not the creation of a general climate of uncertainty in which researchers pre-emptively shy away from productive collaborations,” it says.

ARC investigations have not revealed any instances of property theft connected to its grants, the report notes, while the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation has not accused any university researcher of breaking military research disclosure rules.

“Australia’s national interest might be harmed by such a dramatic fall in support for research collaboration with the PRC [People’s Republic of China] at the same time as the PRC has emerged a leading source of knowledge creation.”

The decline is confined to researchers in China, with the analysis identifying a moderate increase in grants for Australian-based researchers of Chinese heritage. But the report acknowledges anecdotes about such people “feeling unwelcome”.

It suggests that many such researchers have spent years cultivating “productive collaboration networks” with their counterparts in China, urged on by local institutions and government policy settings, and are now “feeling pressure to abandon them”.

Meanwhile, the institute’s annual poll of Australians’ attitudes to China has revealed general support for research cooperation amid scepticism about teaching ties with China, particularly around freedom of speech.

Roughly half of the 2,000 respondents said research collaborations with China boosted Australia’s commercial competitiveness, while two in three said they benefited Australia overall and three in five said they should continue.

john.ross@timeshighereducation.com