Does Chinese research hinge on US co-authors? Evidence from the China initiative

Philippe Aghion, Céline Antonin, Luc Paluskiewicz, David Strömberg, Raphael Wargon, Karolina Westin and Xueping Sun

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: Launched in November 2018 by the Trump administration, the China Initiative was meant to "protect US intellectual property and technologies against Chinese Economic Espionage". In practice, it made administrative procedures more complicated and funding less accessible for collaborative projects between Chinese and US researchers. In this paper we use information from the Scopus database to analyze how the China Initiative shock affected the volume, quality and direction of Chinese research. We find a negative effect of the Initiative on the average quality of both the publications and the co-authors of Chinese researchers with prior US collaborations. Moreover, this negative effect has been stronger for Chinese researchers with higher research productivity and/or who worked on US-dominated fields and/or topics prior to the shock. Finally, we find that Chinese researchers with prior US collaborations reallocated away from US coauthors after the shock and also towards more basic research.

Keywords: Trump administration; China; US intellectual property; technologies; espionage (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I23 O30 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 61 pages
Date: 2023-07-17
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cna and nep-sog
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/121300/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Does Chinese research hinge on US co-authors? Evidence from the China initiative (2023)
Working Paper: Does Chinese research hinge on US co-authors? Evidence from the China Initiative (2023)
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