Landmark US-China science deal’s renewal hinges on personal safety, reciprocity concerns: scholar
- Pact signed in 1979 and due soon for extension has stalled over issues that neither Washington nor Beijing faced before, policy expert says
- Greater US antipathy towards China complicating negotiations, he adds, saying ‘there is no renewal if there’s no compromise’
New issues that were not anticipated by either Washington or Beijing when they signed a landmark agreement four decades ago are now central to ongoing negotiations over the pact’s future, according to a China scholar who has discussed the subject with mainland officials.
Renewed every five years since then-US president Jimmy Carter and Chinese paramount leader Deng Xiaoping signed it in 1979, the US-China Science and Technology agreement was the first bilateral pact finalised between the countries after they established diplomatic ties.
“The whole dynamic of the things … changed, and therefore, the negotiation is all very different than it had been ever before,” Denis Simon, the former executive vice- chancellor of Duke Kunshan University in China, told the Post.
As the two countries’ heated geopolitical rivalry threatens years-long scientific collaboration, “there is no renewal if there’s no compromise”, Simon said, and this was “just the fundamental situation where we are”.