Scientific isolation? The consequences of Trump's China initiative on Chinese research

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

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

Abstract: The 2018 China Initiative by the Trump administration complicated procedures and reduced funding for U.S.-China research collaborations. Using Scopus data, we analyze its impact on Chinese research. We find that it significantly lowered the quality of both publications and co-authors of Chinese researchers with prior U.S. collaborations compared to those with prior European collaborations, and reduced yearly citations for affected researchers by 6%. The effect was stronger for high-productivity Chinese researchers in U.S.-dominated fields. While China is at the forefront of the scientific frontier, it still depends more on the U.S. than the reverse.

Keywords: China initiative; Chinese science; political tensions; science of science (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I23 O31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-09-11
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Published in International Economic Review, 11, September, 2026. ISSN: 0020-6598

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