Future of cooperative US-China science agreement is in doubt, say American physicists

Name: A key US-China science cooperation deal is about to end
Uploaded: 2023-09-05T19:58:40.000Z
Duration: 37 min 53 s
Description: A key US-China science cooperation deal is about to end

Stanford professor who sent letter from fellow scientists to President Joe Biden, urging deal’s renewal, say partisan politics is driving Washington’s change

US State Department extends the agreement, which was initially signed in 1979, for just six more months

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The US-China science and technology cooperation agreement was originally signed in 1979. Photo: Shutterstock

Khushboo Razdanin New York

Published: 3:58am, 6 Sep 2023Updated: 4:05am, 6 Sep 2023

Two Stanford physicists who gathered signatures from 1,000 scientists and scholars from US universities supporting the renewal of the 43-year-old US-China science and technology cooperation agreement say there are not hopeful about the deal’s future given the intense anti-China political sentiment in Washington.

“I am, to be honest, somewhat pessimistic,” said Peter Michelson of Stanford University. “I don’t see a bipartisan consensus coming about.”

“I think the scientific community needs to speak out because I don’t think their voices are always heard,” he added, noting that scientists mostly remain busy in their labs and offices “working on the science and not thinking about the politics”.

“But I think the politics is a driver,” said Michelson, whose letter in support of the agreement’s renewal was sent to US President Joe Biden and dated August 24, three days before the deal was set to expire.

37:53

A key US-China science cooperation deal is about to end

The agreement, originally signed in 1979, laid out the terms for government-to-government cooperation in science, opening the way for academic and corporate interactions. It was last renewed in 2018 for four years.