state, self-organization, and identity in the building … · field. as a result, the continuants...

STATE, SELF-ORGANIZATION, AND IDENTITY IN THE BUILDING

OF SINO-U.S. COOPERATION IN SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY*

Richard P. Suttmeier

Cooperation in science has become an important part ofthe relations between China and the United States, and is use-fully seen in the context of the worldwide phenomenon ofincreasing international scientific cooperation. Attempts toexplain this increase in international scientific cooperationhave called attention to the importance of government-to-government agreements and to self-organizing tendencieswithin the international scientific community. In the China-U.S. case, however, co-ethnic identity, manifested in coau-thoring patterns, seems to be an especially important factor incooperation as well. This article explores these patterns withan eye toward understanding the complex relationshipsbetween transnationalism and our understanding of Chinesenationalism and multiple Chinese identities.

Key words: U.S.-China relations, nationalism, science and tech-nology, cooperation in East Asia

* Work on this paper was made possible by support from the National Sci-ence Foundation, Award # OISE -0440422. Special thanks to Jin Bihui,Caroline Wagner, Wang Zuoyue, and John Tsapogas for sharing gener-ously of their time and published and unpublished writings.

ASIAN PERSPECTIVE, Vol. 32, No. 1, 2008, pp. 5-31.

Introduction

The development of scientific and technological cooperationbetween the United States and China has been an important andenduring theme in China-U.S. relations since Richard Nixon vis-ited China in 1972. Following that visit, an era of exchangingscientific delegations (“scientific tourism” to the disparagingobserver) led to a series of important agreements at the end ofthe 1970s, including the Agreement on the Exchange of Studentsand Scholars in 1978 and the Agreement Between the Govern-ment of the United States of America and the Government of thePeople’s Republic Of China on Cooperation in Science and Tech-nology (S&T Agreement), which subsumed the former, in Janu-ary 1979. The S&T Agreement became an umbrella under whicha large number of agency-to-agency agreements (more thantwenty-five protocols with over sixty annexes) were signedbetween the technical agencies of the U.S. government and theirChinese counterparts. Although activities under these agree-ments have ebbed and flowed during the intervening two anda half decades, overall, cooperative activities under the S&TAgreement have remained reasonably robust in the service ofboth science and of China-U.S. relations, and are now poised toexpand.

These early government-to-government agreements helpedset the stage for the rapid growth of students and scholars com-ing to the United States during and after the 1980s. Over time,this trend took on a life of its own. Largely independent of theformal agreements, the numbers began to swell during thecourse of the 1980s as Chinese and U.S. individuals and organi-zations forged ever more dense ties. The high absorptive capaci-ty of the U.S. university system, the flexible ways in which gov-ernment research funding could be used to support Chinesegraduate students, and the abundant supply of Chinese candi-dates for research and training opportunities in the UnitedStates fueled the growth of the relationship.

Over time, of course, many of the Chinese students andscholars took employment in the U.S. research enterprise, becamecitizens or permanent residents, and launched professional careersand established families in the United States, thus contributing toChina’s brain drain, and the enlargement of the Chinese scientific

6 Richard P. Suttmeier

diaspora in the United States.1 As of 2003, there were an estimated294,800 China-born residents (excluding Taiwan) in the UnitedStates with university-level science and engineering (S&E) degrees,second to the 448,700 from India. Among the Indian population,only 43 percent of the degrees were from the United States; for theChinese, on the other hand, the figure was approximately 72 per-cent. At the master’s degree level, there were 115,500 China-bornS&Es in contrast to 172,700 from India, with approximately 85 per-cent of the Chinese having received their degrees in the UnitedStates; the figure for the Indians was 62.5 percent. At the doctorallevel, though, the China-born degree-holders numbered 62,500(again, this figure excludes the estimated 12,400 Taiwan-born S&Edoctorate holders) in comparison with 41,300 for the India-born,with roughly 76 percent of the doctorates received in the UnitedStates (in contrast to the 66 percent for the Indians). Of the 62,500,74 percent were between the ages of 30 and 49, 37 percent wereemployed in educational institutions (with 49 percent in industry),and 30,000 had become U.S. citizens (with 17,000 of the remainderbeing permanent residents). (See the Appendix.)2

My purpose here is not to revisit the brain drain issue, whichhas received, and continues to receive, expert study and assess-ment. It is, rather, to explore the growth of research collabora-tion between the United States and China in light of the moregeneral phenomenon of the expansion of international scientificcooperation that has occurred over the past twenty years, and toassess the role of common ethnic ties, facilitated by diasporicexpansion, in the growth of this scientific cooperation.

Explaining International Cooperation in S&T

Much has been made in recent years of the globalization ofscience and technology. “Globalization,” of course, must be used

State, Self-Organization, and Identity in the Building of Sino-U.S. Cooperation in Science and Technology 7

1. “Stay rates” for Chinese (and Indian) recipients of U.S. doctorates in sci-ence and engineering (S&E) have remained higher than those of citi-zens of other countries. U.S. National Science Foundation, Science andEngineering Indicators, 2006, appendix 2-33.

2. U.S. National Science Foundation, Science and Engineering Indicators, 2006,appendix 3-18.

advisedly since modern research and technological developmentactivities clearly remain unequally distributed around the world,with large portions of the global south excluded from them. Nev-ertheless, there is abundant evidence that international coopera-tion in science and technology (ICST) has grown dramatically overthe past fifteen years, and that even countries on the peripheryhave not been untouched by this growth. Many governmentsaround the world have increased expenditures on science andtechnology, thus contributing to the international diffusion of tech-nical capabilities. The growth and global expansion of multina-tional corporations, especially those active in high-technologyfields, has been a second powerful force for the diffusion of tech-nologies, and research and innovation capabilities. And, of course,the spread of the Internet has dramatically changed the conditionsunder which scientific communication occurs. The case is oftenmade, therefore, that science is becoming “de-nationalized” asresearch collaborations cross borders with increasing ease.

One consequence of these developments has been the remark-able increase in research collaboration, as seen in the growth ofinternational coauthorship of professional publications.3 As seenin Figure 1, coauthorship has increased in all scientifically activeregions of the world over the past two decades (with China beinga special case).4 A variety of hypotheses have been offered toexplain this growth in international collaboration.5

According to “center-periphery” arguments, modern scien-tific development has been characterized by shifting “centers of


3. Coauthorship, of course, is not the only measure of collaboration, but it isrelatively accessible through data collected and archived by the Institute forScientific Information (ISI) in Philadelphia and other such organizations.

4. As discussed further below, the number of internationally coauthoredpapers from China continues to increase, but the number of Chinesepapers in SCI journals without international coauthoring has increasedmore rapidly.

5. These are reviewed in Caroline Wagner and Loet Leydesdorff, “NetworkStructure, Self-Organization and the Growth of International Collabora-tion in Science,” Research Policy, vol. 34 (2005), pp. 1608-18. See alsoWagner and Leydesdorff, “Mapping the Network of Global Science:Comparing International Co-authorships from 1990 to 2000,” InternationalJournal of Technology and Globalization, vol. 1, No. 2 (2005), pp. 185-208,and National Science Foundation, Science and Engineering Indicators, 2004,chap, 5.

science,” with countries on the periphery seeking to cooperatewith, and learn from, the centers. In the process, capabilities dif-fuse to the periphery and collaboration increases, largely as afunction of processes internal to science. A variant of that viewfocuses more on public and private policy decisions to enhancescientific and technological capabilities through significantincreases in support for research and development and advancededucation. This might be termed the “S&T for Development”thesis, which emphasizes the building of national scientific andtechnological capabilities through investment strategies thatinclude the active encouragement of international scientificcooperation.

A third, “specialization” thesis, focuses on the differentia-tion of scientific disciplines and the need to bring together com-


Figure 1. Share of Scientific and Technical Articles with InternationalCoauthorship, by Country/Region: 1988, 1996, and 2003

EU = European UnionNote: Asia-8 includes South Korea, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singa-

pore, Taiwan, and Thailand.Source: National Science Board, Science and Engineering Indicators 2006.

plementary specialized knowledge for scientific progress. Thespecialization thesis recognizes considerable cross-field varia-tion. A special application of this hypothesis would be the mobi-lization of different specializations in support of megascienceprojects. Finally, some explanations have emphasized variousextra-scientific factors promoting collaboration. These could bebased on history (for instance, colonial legacies), geographicpropinquity, or convenience. The growth of information andtelecommunications technologies to facilitate interactions alsofalls within this category, as would the growth of internationaltrade and investment.

In spite of the prima facie plausibility of these explanations,and evidence in their support in some circumstances, CarolineWagner and Loet Leydesdorff have argued that a better explana-tion for the growth of ICST is to be found in theories of self-orga-nizing systems. In their work, international collaborative net-works expand through processes of “preferential attachment,”either by adding new members to a network or by adding morelinks among existing members. Borrowing from the literature onscientific collaboration, Wagner and Leydesdorff suggest that wecan think of the international scientific community as populatedby four types of scientists: “terminants” (those at the end of theircareers), “newcomers,” “transients” (those coming into one fieldfrom another, typically on a short-term basis with typically onlyone publication resulting from collaboration), and “continuants”(the most active publishing scientists).6 According to Wagnerand Leydesdorff:

In network terms, . . . continuants play a role as “hubs” to whichothers connect. A large number of members within the networkare competing for reputation and reward in terms of internationalcoauthorship relations using the mechanism of preferential attach-ment. However, some become so well-connected that they nolonger compete for reputation, rather they compete to build net-works of intellectual followers of the next generation . . .

They go on to note that,

Hubs dominate the structure of the networks in which they are


6. Wagner and Leydesdorff, “Network Structure,” p. 1615.

present, and they play a specific structuring role. Theory suggeststhat within networks, actors display preferential attachment: whenchoosing between two possible links, they will seek to connect tothe more connected member. In other words, when someone isseeking a collaborator, they will seek someone who’s alreadyhighly connected . . .

Thus:

The more senior (or reputed) members of a group hold privilegedsocial and technical information. . . . Newcomers and transientsseek access to this information as well as recognition within theirfield. As a result, the continuants (and perhaps the terminants) act-ing as hubs within their scientific networks, are attractive collabo-rators. The sought after partner, in turn, can choose carefullyamong the many opportunities to collaborate. As Melin (2000)found, senior researchers work with junior people to gain higherproductivity and credibility within their field. The costs of collabo-ration are borne by the newcomers and transients who potentiallygain greater visibility by working with a well-known person. . . .This would suggest that in certain fields, there may be a differentpattern of preferential attachment for junior and senior scientistsrespectively. . . . In general, the continuants and terminants act asgatekeepers to newer entrants into the network, creating a socialdynamic within the network . . .7

The Wagner and Leydesdorff thesis is an intriguing one in avariety of ways. It returns to strong traditions in the sociology ofscience, which emphasizes reputation building through peerrecognition as a powerful motivation in science, and the strongforces of relatively autonomous community building throughself organization. It is a view that treats science as a quasi-mar-ket system built around agent-like individuals. It also has inter-esting policy implications that are not entirely consistent withthe kinds of structured, programmatic initiatives in support ofinternational cooperation that one finds in varying degrees inthe more scientifically active countries.8 In the Wagner-Leydes-dorff view, the best explanation for the growth of international


7. Wagner and Leydesdorff, “Network Structure,” p. 8.8. Caroline Wagner, “International Collaboration in Science: A New Dynamic

for Knowledge Creation,” Ph.D. dissertation, School of CommunicationsResearch, University of Amsterdam (2004).

collaboration is found in the growth of a network of scientistswhich is truly international and which rests uneasily with ideasof national science and technology policies or national systems ofinnovation.

However, the thesis also raises a number of questions aboutthe nature of the actors in the network and on the processesfacilitating or inhibiting network formation and growth. In par-ticular, one wonders about the size and distribution of the trans-action costs faced by members of the network and how theseaffect the “market failures” (i.e., failures of expected collabora-tion) in this quasi-market system.9 This, in turn, raises questionsabout the means available to network members, or prospectivemembers, for overcoming transaction costs and market failures,questions that inevitably take us back to government policies insupport of collaboration. We should also note that althoughWagner and Leydesdorff do disaggregate their analysis toregional networks of collaboration, their approach is one ofaggregate data analysis, which is insensitive to the particulari-ties of individual cases of collaboration. For our purposes here,this includes cases of collaboration involving co-ethnic scientistsin diasporic communities, as one finds in the China-U.S. experi-ence (and, of course, in the India-U.S. case as well).

Thus, while the Wagner-Leydesdorff thesis offers an appeal-ing motivational theory for international collaboration, it doesnot fully address the fact that network formation is not costless.Accounting for those costs is necessary to support the plausibili-ty of the motivational theory. Government interventions (and


9. Market failure problems are often behind active government policies insupport of scientific research, classically with regard to basic research.In developing countries, government support for R&D more generally—in addition to basic research—is often justified by the belief that mar-kets cannot be counted on to generate scientific and technological capa-bilities at an appropriate level. Debates in China today about the properrole of government in promoting science and technology turn verymuch on this issue, with Chinese economists sometimes questioningthe wisdom of many government science initiatives, while representa-tives of the technical community push the need for ever more ambitiousnational science and technology programs, including the active promo-tion of international scientific and technological cooperation, as dis-cussed further below.

policy interventions from private organizations as well) clearlywould represent one approach to the management of costs, butso would the exploitation of common identities built aroundshared language and cultural traditions. Let us explore the rela-tive importance of these factors in greater detail.

Patterns of Chinese Coauthorship and Cooperation with the United States

In keeping with international trends, Chinese internationalcoauthorship has also increased substantially in recent years. Asseen in Figure 2, internationally coauthored papers involvingChina-based researchers increased from 1,860 in 1991 to 15,069in 2005.10 At the same time, given the rapid rise in the number ofChinese papers in the international science and engineering lit-erature, the percentage of internationally coauthored papers hasactually declined somewhat after rising between 1996 and 2002.

As Figure 3 indicates, Chinese coauthoring with colleaguesin the United States notably exceeds coauthoring with researchers


10. All data on Chinese coauthoring, unless otherwise noted, are based onunpublished analyses performed by Jin Bihui et al. of the Library of theChinese Academy of Sciences. I am grateful to Professor Jin for sharingthis data with me.

Figure 2. Patterns of Chinese International Co-Authoring, 1996-2005


Figure 3. China’s Top 5 Co-Authoring Partners, 1996-2005

Figure 4. China’s Top 5 Co-Authoring Partners, 1996-2005; Chinese First Authors

in other countries. This is true in cases where the China-basedscientist was the first author as well (see Figure 4).

Jin Bihui and her colleagues at the Library of the ChineseAcademy of Sciences recently studied Chinese international coop-eration in four fields in depth and have discovered that thestrength of the ties with the United States—and of the UnitedStates with China—has deepened in all four (chemistry, nano-sci-ence, genetics, and cell biology) even as the number of countrieswith which significant cooperation occurs has expanded.

In 1996, for instance, the United States had only sixteencoauthored papers with China in nano-science but had eighty-six with Germany, sixty-five with Japan, and forty-three withRussia. By 2005, however, the U.S.-China number had grown to293, which surpassed 269 with Germany, 202 with Japan, and195 with South Korea (which took over third place from Russia).In 1996, the sixteen papers with U.S. authors represented thesecond most active link for Chinese scientists after the twenty-one with Japan. Germany was third with eleven papers. By 2005,however, cooperation with the United States dominated Chineseinternational coauthoring in nano-science; that year, the numberincreased to 293, with Japan a distant second with 129 papers,and Germany again third with 88.

Of particular interest in Figures 3 and 4, and in the more in-depth analyses of the four fields, is the rapid rise in China-U.S.coauthoring after 2000, a time when official China-U.S. relationswere sometimes tense, when the Chinese government wasencouraging expanded scientific cooperation with Europe andother countries, and after 9/11, when new U.S. visa require-ments introduced new complications in China-U.S. cooperation.

How do we explain this striking growth in China-U.S. col-laboration even in the face of increasing political complexities?How does the China-U.S. case fit with explanations for thegrowth of ICST more generally?

Public Policy and State Interventions

Most western interpretations of the development of China-U.S. S&T relations call attention to the seemingly critical initia-tives of the two governments in both the pre-normalization,


post-Shanghai Communiqué era (1972-1978), and in the postnormalization period (after 1979) in providing for the develop-ment of collaborative ties.11 On the other hand, there has longbeen a skeptical, somewhat libertarian, interpretation withregard to the diplomatic framework for the collaboration, andmore specifically for the active government-to-government pro-grams. In this view, once the political obstacles to collaborationwere removed through the normalization of diplomatic rela-tions, it was possible for researchers in the two countries to findtheir common interests and allow collaboration to develop onthe basis of these interests—a view that accords with the Wagn-er-Leydesdorff perspective. An active government role in pro-moting collaboration through political agreements, and expendi-tures in support of those agreements, is seen in this view as aless than efficient utilization of resources and would be inconsis-tent with the dynamic processes of science.

The U.S. government has sought to find equilibrium betweenactive programmatic support for the relationship with China anda far more laissez-faire approach to scientific collaboration. Sincethe signing of the S&T Agreement there has long been dissatisfac-tion in some quarters (including among Chinese government offi-cials and scientific partners from China) that, on the U.S. side, therelationship is underfunded and lacking in strategic vision andeffective central coordination; market failures were keeping theactivities at a suboptimal level with reference to the social benefitsthat would accrue from more active government intervention.

With few exceptions, however, from administration to admin-istration the United States has taken the position that the technicalagencies had to assess their interest in collaboration with Chinaand then find the resources to support that collaboration. This hasresulted in the application of “hard budget” constraints on mostactivities; collaboration with China would be supported if itserved the technical mission of the agency and the science sup-


11. Of course, in the development of the Sino-American scientific relation-ship following the 1972 Nixon visit, a critical role was played by theCommittee for Scholarly Communication with the People’s Republic ofChina (CSCPRC), a nongovernmental organization representing theU.S. scholarly community, and by the nominally nongovernmentalChina Association for Science and Technology (CAST). Both organiza-tions, however, were closely linked to government policy.

porting that mission.12 Ultimately, this tended to drive collabora-tive decision making to heavier reliance on the scientific merit ofproposed activities.13

On the Chinese side, on the other hand, the approach hasbeen different—partly, one suspects, because of its relative eco-nomic and scientific underdevelopment, but also because ofstrong (pre- and post-1949) traditions of state control and direc-tion of knowledge. Chinese science, we should recall, had beenterribly disrupted by the Cultural Revolution at the time thatactive collaborative activities with the United States began in the1970s. As various students of China-U.S. relations have noted,one of the appeals of normalization of relations with the UnitedStates in 1979 was to gain access to the American system of sci-ence as well as to American technology.14

From the beginning, therefore, the state took an active rolein planning and coordinating collaborative activities with theUnited States. These activities were included in formal plans,resources were set aside to fund them, and a cadre of adminis-trators was recruited to manage the relationship. Over time, thestrategic importance of this relationship became increasinglyrefined, with increasingly clearer formulations of strategic objec-tives and increasingly sophisticated mechanisms for incorporat-ing scientific judgments, all in the hands of seasoned adminis-


12. Historically, the most notable exception has been the Department ofAgriculture, which has international outreach as part of its definedinstitutional mission.

13. But it may also have led to missed opportunities. In recent years, China’sS&T cooperation with Europe has had a different cast, being far morestructured and directed by governments. It remains to be seen whichapproach is more productive over the longer term.

14. But Chinese appreciation for the importance of science in its interna-tional relations, and of international scientific cooperation for Chineseinterests, goes back before the Cultural Revolution. Wang Zuoyue, forinstance, calls attention to a talk given by then Premier Zhou Enlai toChinese diplomats in 1966 in which they were instructed to “learnenough science and technology to be able to coordinate the process ofabsorbing scientific and technological information from the countrieswhere they were stationed.” See Wang Zuoyue, “U.S.-China ScientificExchange: A Case Study of State-Sponsored Scientific Internationalismduring the Cold War and Beyond,” Historical Studies in the Physical andBiological Sciences, vol. 30, Part 1 (Fall, 1999), pp. 249-77.

trators who had “worked the issues” with the United States formany years. In the United States, of course, administrative lead-ership for the relationship has changed with the political cyclesresulting from elections and from normal career rotations in theState Department.15 For better or worse, however, the govern-ment-to-government framework has persisted and has hadsome achievements. Nevertheless, as the data on coauthoredpapers clearly indicates, there is a vast realm of collaborativeactivity among China-based and U.S.-based scientists outside ofdirect governmental purview.

This brief administrative overview suggests that one cannotunderstand the development of China-U.S. scientific cooperation,including the growing coauthorship, without paying attention tothe role of government. There is considerable room for debate,however, as to the nature and effectiveness of government initi-ated activities in comparison with the more self-organizing activ-ities of members of the scientific communities themselves.

Ethnicity and Identity in the Relationship

The Crucial Place of Ethnicity in Collaboration

Conceptually, somewhere between the idea of a self-organiz-ing system and government planned and coordinated collabora-tion, there is room for common identities in energizing interna-tional cooperation in science. And, empirically, it is not difficult tomiss the fact that Chinese ethnicity has been, and continues to be,an important factor in the development of collaboration. C. N.Yang (Yang Chenning), T. D. Lee (Li Congdao), and other Ameri-can scientists of Chinese descent played important roles in theearly years of reestablishing scientific contacts and in makingthose contacts serve the process of reestablishing diplomatic ties.16

The CUSPEA (China-U.S. Physics Examination and Application)


15. Although one sees some continuity in the staffs of the technical agenciesthemselves, at the policy level U.S. programs with China are directed bythe White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and by theBureau of Oceans, International Environmental, and Scientific Affairs atthe Department of State.

16. Wang, “U.S.-China Scientific Exchange.”

program, started by T. D. Lee, which brought almost 1,000 ofChina’s best physics students to the United States for graduatetraining during the course of its existence, was a highly visibleeffort at building cooperation. It was by no means the only initia-tive from ethnic Chinese scientists in the United States, however,to help train a new generation of scientists from China and lay thefoundation for future cooperation. Early on, ethnic Chinese in thetechnical agencies of the U.S. government were recruited to helpmanage the developing relationship and bridge civilizational dif-ferences. U.S. corporations brought—and continue to bring—theirethnic Chinese scientists and engineers into important roles foropening up business contacts with China.

Co-ethnic professional societies, whose numbers have grownover the past twenty-five years, have also played an important rolein developing China-U.S. cooperation. For example, the Society ofChinese Bioscientists in America (SCBA), founded in 1984, nowhas thirty local chapters in the United States, Canada, Hong Kong,Singapore, Taiwan (Taipei and Tainan), and China (Shanghai andBeijing). At its tenth international conference in Beijing, co-hostedwith the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and the Ministry ofScience and Technology (MOST), topics ranged from reports oncutting edge basic research to new trends in the biotechnologyindustry, to the “how-to’s” for applying and being accepted intoU.S. graduate programs. A review of the SCBA website shows aremarkable membership of researchers in Chinese communities onboth sides of the Pacific.17

In spite of its evident importance, systematic study of Chi-nese co-ethnic scientific and technological cooperation is onlybeginning.18 The following discussion represents a preliminary


17. See www.scba-society.org.18. There are exceptions. AnnaLee Saxenian’s important work has called

attention to the importance of co-ethnic ties in building communities ofindustrial technologists, and recent work using patent data by WilliamKerr has shown the importance of co-ethnic technical communities forthe spread of tacit knowledge in the processes of technological diffusion.See William Kerr, “Ethnic Scientific Communities and InternationalTechnology Diffusion,” unpublished paper, online at http://pine.hbs.edu/external/facPersonalShow.do?pid=337265. See also Xiang Biao,“Promoting Knowledge Exchange Through Diaspora Networks (TheCase of the People’s Republic of China),” Report to the Asian Develop-

approach to analyzing this phenomenon by looking at patterns ofcoauthorship between ethnic Chinese researchers in the UnitedStates and those in China. The data is drawn from the Web of Sci-ence maintained by the Thompson Institute for Scientific Informa-tion on a subscription basis. The database includes publicationsfrom most of the world’s major professional journals from 1975 to2004. Searches conducted solely by the addresses of the authors(e.g., “China,” “USA”) yield 36,674 records of internationallycoauthored articles during this period (36,285 in English), againindicating that there has been a fairly robust pattern of coauthor-ing going on between China and the United States.19

Unfortunately, it is not possible, electronically, to determinefrom this population how many coauthorships are co-ethnic, anda manual review of the total number of records would be imprac-tical. It was therefore decided to choose a series of fairly narrowsubfield designations, based upon a subjective sense of subjectsthat are “hot,” and search the database using both the “subject”entries and “addresses.” The subfield designations included “gridcomputing,” “thin film materials,” “bioinformatics,” “ceramics,”“superconductivity,” and “condensed matter.”20 The number ofrecords returned is shown in Figure 5.

From the coauthorship records identified, a manual search wasconducted matching Chinese surnames with Chinese addressesand Chinese surnames with U.S. addresses. While the results vary


ment Bank, ESRC Centre on Migration, Policy and Society (COMPAS),University of Oxford, March, 2005. For a recent treatment of the Indiancase, see Ajay Agrawal, Devesh Kapur, and John McHale, “Birds of aFeather, Better Together? Exploring the Optimal Spatial Distribution ofEthnic Inventors,” National Bureau of Economic Research WorkingPaper No. 12823, online at www.nber.org/papers/w12823.

19. Searches were limited to published articles only, not notes, proceed-ings, and others forms of published communication. This total can becompared with the total of 32,857 papers identified by Jin Bihui and hercolleagues for 1991-2005.

20. It should be noted that the use of the subject designations will not exhaustthe possibilities for collaboration in these fields. For instance, there may bemore work going on in the area of bioinformatics than is captured bysearching by that category. Thus, if one wanted a comprehensive view ofChina-U.S. coauthoring in bioinformatics, a different search strategywould be required. My purpose, however, was to generate a small popu-lation that could be analyzed in a nonelectronic fashion.

with subfield, the strength of the co-ethnic common identity isevident. For instance, for the new field of “bioinformatics,” thirty-six of the thirty-nine records considered were co-ethnic publica-tions. The records which were not co-ethnic were publicationsresulting from multilateral cooperation from a number of coun-tries, with a non-Chinese identified as “reprint author.”21

Web of Science allows for some additional analysis of thedata, including the frequency of author names, institutionalaffiliations, and years of publications in five-year increments. Inthe bioinformatics case, two authors (“continuants”?) accountedfor approximately 50 percent of the coauthoring, and over thefive-year period during which bioinformatics emerged as a field,they had multiple affiliations: the Gordon Life Science Institutein San Diego, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the ShanghaiCenter for Bioinformatics Technology, the Tianjin Institute forBioinformatics and Drug Discovery, the University of Manches-ter, and a private U.S. company.

The “condensed matter” designation also led to a manageablepopulation of records. Again, we see co-ethnic collaboration as adominant feature in coauthorship. In the ten records reviewed,only three had non-Chinese authors; in one case the non-Chinesewas in Canada, and in one case, Poland. The one U.S.-based non-Chinese was the reprint author, with the coauthors being oneChina-based Chinese and one U.S.-based non-Chinese. Althoughthe sample is small, we can again see one or two individuals beingwell represented.

In the case of ceramics and superconductivity, we have


21. In most cases, but not all, the reprint author was also the first author.

Figure 5. Co-Ethnicity in Chinese Publication Activity in Selected Fields

All languages In English U.S.-Coauthor Co-ethnic % Co-ethnic

GridComp 129 129 2 1 50.00%Thin Film 23 17 0 ERRBioinfo 207 164 39 36 92.31%Ceramics 1073 923 155 106 68.39%Supercom 1920 1853 179 137 76.54%Con Matt 74 65 10 8 80.00%

somewhat larger populations, but the strong co-ethnic pattern isstill evident. Of 179 superconductivity records, 137 had ethnicChinese reprint authors and at least one ethnic Chinese coauthor.In this field, an ethnic Chinese, C. W. Chu, has been an interna-tional leader in the field and, not surprisingly, he is listed as acoauthor on forty of the papers. Until becoming president of theHong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST), Chuhad been at the University of Houston, which shows up as theleading address (n=42) for work in this field (followed by CAS,with thirty-seven records, and HKUST with twenty). Many of theother frequently appearing authors, ethnic Chinese and non-Chi-nese, are associated with the Houston and HKUST groups.

The Changing Research Environment in China

These findings, however preliminary, point to the strength ofco-ethnicity as a factor in collaboration and suggest that issues ofidentity warrant more attention in discussions of ICST. If one sub-scribes to social constructionist views of ethnicity, however, it isalso necessary to probe more deeply into the social settings inwhich identity is constructed and comes to shape internationalcollaborations. This is especially true with regard to Chinese sci-ence, given the sizable numbers of ethnic Chinese in the U.S. tech-nical community and the significant changes that have occurredin the Chinese research environment over the past fifteen years.

With regard to the latter, we have seen major reforms in theChinese research system and the infusion of financial resourcesto support scientific development. The combination of these twofactors has made the Chinese research environment exceedinglycompetitive and has put a premium on publication-based successmeasures. The awarding of advanced degrees, promotions andsalary increases, and success in competition for research fundinghave all been linked to publication in SCI journals. The rapidgrowth of Chinese-authored papers in the international technicalliterature noted above is in part a reflection of the incentive struc-ture at work in China as well as a measure of increased Chineseresearch productivity. The strong emphasis placed upon publica-tion is also thought to contribute to the problems of Chineseresearch misconduct that have attracted international attention inthe last few years.


The emphasis placed upon building a successful publicationrecord in China may help explain the growth of Chinese interna-tionally-coauthored papers, especially when the impact factorsof the papers is considered. In keeping with the logic of theWagner-Leydesdorff thesis, it would be reasonable for Chinesescientists to seek to build collaborative relationships with scien-tists abroad who, as coauthors, could facilitate the successfulplacement of papers in prestigious international journals. Whenimpact factors are introduced, the value of international coau-thoring may increase.

For instance, Robert Kostoff has shown in a recent study thatinternational coauthoring can have a major positive effect on thecitation rates of papers by Chinese authors.22 In the Wagner-Ley-desdorff scheme, Chinese scientists thus might be thought of asseeking “preferential attachments” with “continuants,” those atthe hubs of professional networks, to enhance both the prospectof publications in prestigious journals and to enhance the impactfactors of their publications. As the quality of research in Chinaimproves, the number of China-based continuants is likely toincrease; the notable increase in first authorship seen in Figure 4,for instance, would support this view. At the same time, as China-born scientists in the United States establish careers and reputa-tions there, they are becoming a larger proportion of the continu-ants working in the United States (the data on the age structureof China-born doctorate holders in the Appendix indirectly sup-ports this view).

Thus, if co-ethnic coauthoring is as prevalent as our prelimi-nary analysis suggests, we may be seeing the interactive effects ofself-organization and ethnicity, i.e., the emergence of an ethnically-based transnational technical community in which common iden-tities facilitate self-organization. The early cohorts of U.S.-basedethnic Chinese have moved from graduate students to established“continuant” scientists who become the targets of “preferentialattachment” of Chinese scientists working in China, who face ademanding reward structure emphasizing SCI publications andhigh impact factors. On the other hand, Chinese research in China


22. Kostoff et al., “The Structure and Infrastructure of Chinese Science andTechnology,” DTIC Technical Report, No. ADA 443315 (2006), online atwww.dtic.mil/.

is maturing and producing both domestically-trained researchleaders and an increasing number of foreign-trained researcherswho have returned to China; they are gradually establishing them-selves as hubs in international research networks, but ones whichseem to be facilitated by common ethnic ties.23

The analysis above suggests that in the China-U.S. case ofinternational scientific cooperation, ethnic ties play a very impor-tant role in facilitating cooperation. At the same time, such ties areinfluenced by the contingencies of the research environments inthe two countries. This suggests that notions of “international,”“transnational,” and “national” science and technology requirereconsideration.

Ethnicity, Identity, and the Play of Nationalism(s)

A useful place to start might be in reviewing recent writingsabout “techno-nationalism” and “Chinese nationalism.” SandroMontresor has suggested in a recent paper exploring the rela-tionships between nationalism and science and technology thatit is important to distinguish between state-oriented conceptionsof nationalism and those that focus more on ideas of commonidentity. In his discussion of techno-nationalism, for instance, heargues that in its conventional usage, distinctions between“nation” and “state” often are blurred, such that the concept mayobscure as much as it clarifies. He therefore proposes a definitionthat distinguishes between what he calls “techno-statism” and“techno-nationality.”24 The former encompasses the state’s con-trol over the spatial dimensions of innovation systems (referredto as “techno-territoriality”), the nature and extent of the state’s


23. In some cases, returnees who networked successfully with continuantswhile abroad may find that the challenges of establishing professionalidentities in China, through the initiation of new lines of research, make itless desirable to collaborate with overseas continuants. This, in turn, maybe a factor in the declining share of internationally coauthored papersfrom China noted above. I am grateful to Shi Bing of the EvaluationResearch Center of the Chinese Academy of Sciences for this observation.

24. Sandro Montresor, “Techno-Globalism, Techno-Nationalism and Techno-logical Systems: Organizing the Evidence,” Technovation, vol. 21 (2001), pp.399-412.

control over governance structures for technology-related poli-cymaking and implementation (“techno-sovereignty”), and thenature of obligations and accountability regarding research andinnovation (“techno-citizenship”).

Though linguistically awkward, the concept of “techno-nationality,” on the other hand, calls attention to the relevanceof ethnicity, language, and the grounds for “socio-culture shar-ing” in the development of technologies. It is also a particularlysuggestive term for thinking about the kinds of diasporic techni-cal communities that we are considering here, those transcend-ing the political jurisdictions of the state, but which are never-theless socially integrated—at least to some extent—by commonethnic and cultural ties.

Recent writings about nationalism in China have also pointedto such distinctions. William Callahan, for instance, by identifyingfour different possible usages, calls attention to the ambiguousnature of the concept of “Chinese nationalism” as it is used in vari-ous narrative circumstances. He sees, first, a “nativist” manifesta-tion of “China” as Zhongguo, where China is treated as a threat-ened territorial entity needing protection from a hostile outsideenvironment. This can be distinguished from a second “conquest”narrative, linked more to China as a strong empire (da Zhongguo)that has experienced “a century of humiliation” and is nowreclaiming its rightful place in the world, especially in East Asia. Athird expression—da Zhonghua—focuses more on ethnicity andculture. For Callahan, this “conversion” narrative refers to a self-confident China dealing with its environment through civilizationalpower; nationalism here is less associated with territorial protectionor integrity and more with a variety of exchange relationships withthe outside world that extend the values of Chinese civilization tothe international environment. Finally, there is the nationalism ofthe Chinese diaspora in which a core of Chinese identity helpsstructure and is maintained in complex transnational relations inwhich diverse civilizational elements are flexibly mixed together.25

All four elements can be found in the China-U.S. scientificcooperation experience generally, and in the co-ethnic coauthor-


25. William A. Callahan, “Nationalism, Civilization and TransnationalRelations: The Discourse of Greater China,” Journal of ContemporaryChina, vol. 14, No. 43 (May, 2005), pp. 79-99.

ing phenomenon more specifically, although the fourth dias-poric expression (oriented to transnational Chinese civilization)is perhaps the most widely accepted. As seen in the activities oforganizations such as the SCBA and other transnational profes-sional associations, for instance, membership organizations withbases in different political jurisdictions and members with dif-ferent citizenship come together around “a core of Chinese iden-tity.” The 2004 SCBA meeting in Beijing was not, seemingly, cel-ebrating Chinese bioscience but rather a more universalistic cul-tural practice, albeit one with both Chinese- and U.S.-inspired“civilizational elements” (among these, the “how to get into U.S.graduate schools” conference panels!).

On the other hand, the cosponsorship of this particular eventby a Chinese state that has often linked scientific and technologicaldevelopment to the ideas of “a threatened territorial entity need-ing protection from a hostile outside environment” (the nativistnarrative) and, more recently, to a political entity “which has expe-rienced ‘a century of humiliation’ and ‘is now reclaiming its right-ful place in the world’” points to a “scientific statism” at work inthe cultivation of international collaboration. This is occurringeven as many of the researchers who are partners in collaborationmight wish to distance themselves from state focused scientificand technological nationalism of this sort.26

Callahan’s “conversion” narrative of da Zhonghua (“in which aself-confident China” deals with a potentially hostile environment“through it civilizational power”) is one which is also inclusive ofthe state and non-state actors involved in co-ethnic internationalscientific cooperation. The appeals of da Zhonghua undoubtedlyalso include the possibility of reconciling ideas of the universalismof modern science with universalistic beliefs associated with Chi-nese cultural nationalism, thus resolving one of the cultural dilem-mas of modern Chinese history, i.e., the perceived antipathy ofmodern science and Chinese culture.27

The da Zhonghua narrative may also play a special role in the


26. For a good discussion of the importance of state initiatives in promotingscientific cooperation through diasporic networks, see Xiang, “Promot-ing Knowledge Exchange through Diaspora Networks.”

27. Suisheng Zhao, A Nation-State by Construction (Stanford, Calif.: StanfordUniversity Press, 2004).

United States. As Wang Zuoyue has noted, the growth of scien-tific ties between China and the United States in the post-Shang-hai communique era coincided with the growth of collectiveidentity and activism within the ethnic Chinese community inthe United States. Chinese-American scientists played importantroles in the development of that relationship, as noted above,but the rising profile of China and Chinese science in the UnitedStates also tended to reinforce a sense of confidence about ethnicidentity within the Chinese community in the United States.28

On the other hand, awareness of the da Zhonghua narrativeoutside the Chinese community in the United States may also fuelconcerns—many of which carry the scent of racism—that co-eth-nic ties supporting scientific and technological cooperation withChina may be aiding the development of Chinese national powerto the detriment of U.S. power. The Wen Ho Lee case readilycomes to mind.29 While these concerns have been more in areas ofstrategic high technology rather than in scientific research, as therelationships between science and high technology become evermore intimate, the more specific concerns for “technology leak-age,” especially through espionage, have evolved into a moregeneralized set of concerns which, as we know, have led to morerestrictive immigration practices and the extension of an exportcontrols mentality into university laboratories.30

Conclusion

The discussion above leads to two seemingly disparate con-


28. Wang, “U.S.-China Scientific Exchange” and “Chinese American Scien-tists and U.S.-China Scientific Relations: From Richard Nixon to Wen HoLee,” in Peter H. Koehn and Xiao-huang Yin, eds., The Expanding Roles ofChinese Americans in U.S.-China Relations: Transnational Networks andTrans-Pacific Interactions (New York: M. E. Sharpe, 2002), pp. 207-334.

29. Ibid.30. See Commission on Scientific Communication and National Security,

“Security Controls on the Access of Foreign Scientists and Engineers to theUnited States,” Homeland Security Program, Center for Strategic andInternational Studies, October, 2005; Committee on Policy Implications ofInternational Graduate Students and Postdoctoral Scholars in United States,Policy Implications of International Graduate Students and Postdoctoral Scholarsin the United States (Washington, D.C.: National Academies Press, 2005).

clusions. With reference to the conditions under which interna-tional cooperation in scientific research occurs, a preliminaryconclusion is that the argument in favor of self-organizing sys-tems is a bit too simple; it seems highly unlikely that the pat-terns of co-ethnic coauthoring we see would result solely fromthe mechanisms that Wagner and Leydesdorff identify. Thatsaid, however, it also seems that some form of “preferentialattachment” is at work, and that ethnic-Chinese with both Unit-ed States and Chinese addresses are important “continuants” insome fields of international science. It will be useful to furtherexplore through interviews and surveys the reasons ethnic Chi-nese scientists collaborate the way they do.

The degree to which co-ethnicity seems to drive coauthor-ing also points to the need to think further about the nature androle of nationalism in international science. Here, evolving con-cepts of nationalism that recognize its complex and contingentnature may be useful, especially in identifying the ways inwhich a sense of nationality as a basis for identity may differfrom nationalism as the basis for political organization and statecoherence. The China-U.S. case illustrates very nicely the waysin which shared identity bolsters international cooperation. Atthe same time, the complex, crosscutting nature of nationalismcan also lead to perceptions of co-ethnic scientific collaborationsupporting state projects of scientific and technological national-ism in China. Such projects might, in turn, unleash forces anti-thetical to scientific cooperation.

The discussion above points to the messiness of transnationalrelations in an era of globalization. It is highly unlikely that trendstoward increasing international cooperation in science will bereversed any time in the future, and there is a need for betterunderstanding of what motivates and facilitates this importantforce for globalization. Our preliminary findings here are that co-ethnicity can be a very important factor in some circumstances. Atthe same time, the underlying ambiguities of nationalism meanthat co-ethnicity as a base for scientific collaboration sits uncom-fortably in a world where identity is more than citizenship, whereglobal processes erode state prerogatives, and yet where, as a con-sequence, states seek to enhance their power and legitimacy byappeals to nationalist sentiments.


Appendix. Characteristics of China-born Holders S&E Doctorates, 2003

Employment PercentageEducation 37Industry 49Government 5

Field of DegreeComputer/Math 8Bio, Agric., Environment 30Physical 21Social 6Engineering 27S&E Related 5

Occupation CategoryComputer/Math 18Bio, Agric., Environment 25Physical 11Social 2Engineering 18S&E Related 8Non-S&E Related 8Unemployed/NILF 10

Age70+ 265-69 460-64 655-59 750-54 545-49 1340-44 2535-39 2030-34 1625-29 2

CitizenshipUS 30,000Chinese 28,000Other 4,500Perm Res. 17,000Temp. 13,000

Source: US NSF, Division of Science Resources Statistics, Scientists and Engineers Statis-tical Data System (SESTAT)


Principal References

Agrawal, Ajay, Devesh Kapur, and John McHale. “Birds of aFeather, Better Together? Exploring the Optimal SpatialDiffusion of Ethnic Inventors,” National Bureau of EconomicResearch Working Paper No. 12823, at www.nber.org/papers/w12823.

Callahan, William A. “Nationalism, Civilization and TransnationalRelations: The Discourse of Greater China,” Journal of Con-temporary China, vol. 14, No. 43 (May, 2005), pp. 79-99.

Commission on Scientific Communication and National Securi-ty. “Security Controls on the Access of Foreign Scientistsand Engineers to the United States,” Homeland SecurityProgram, Center for Strategic and International Studies,October, 2005.

Committee on Policy Implications of International GraduateStudents and Postdoctoral Scholars in the United States.Policy Implications of International Graduate Students andPostdoctoral Scholars in United States. Washington, D.C.:National Academies Press, 2005.

Kerr, William. “Ethnic Scientific Communities and InternationalTechnology Diffusion,” unpublished paper online at pine.hbs.edu/external/facPersonalShow.do?pid=337265.

Kostoff, Robert et al. “The Structure and Infrastructure of ChineseScience and Technology,” DTIC Technical Report NumberADA 443315 (2006), online at www.dtic.mil/.

Montresor, Sandro. “Techno-Globalism, Techno-Nationalism andTechnological Systems: Organizing the Evidence,” Techno-vation, vol. 21 (2001), pp. 399-412.

Saxenian, AnnaLee. The New Argonauts. Cambridge, Mass.: Har-vard University Press, 2006.

U.S. National Science Foundation. Science and Engineering Indica-tors, 2006. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office,2006.

Wagner, Caroline. “International Collaboration in Science: ANew Dynamic for Knowledge Creation,” Ph.D. disserta-tion, School of Communications Research, University ofAmsterdam, 2004.

Wagner, Caroline and Loet Leydesdorff. “Network Structure, Self-Organization and the Growth of International Collaboration


in Science,” Research Policy, vol. 34 (2005), pp. 1608-18._______. “Mapping the Network of Global Science: Comparing

International Co-authorships from 1990 to 2000,” Interna-tional Journal of Technology and Globalization, vol. 1, No. 2(2005), pp. 185-208.

Wang, Zuoyue. “Chinese American Scientists and U.S.-ChinaScientific Relations: From Richard Nixon to Wen Ho Lee,”in Peter H. Koehn and Xiao-huang Yin, eds., The ExpandingRoles of Chinese Americans in U.S.-China Relations: Transna-tional Networks and Trans-Pacific Interactions. New York: M. E. Sharpe, 2002.

_______. “U.S.-China Scientific Exchange: A Case Study of State-Sponsored Scientific Internationalism During the ColdWar and Beyond,” Historical Studies in the Physical and Bio-logical Sciences, vol. 30, Part 1 (Fall, 1999), pp. 249-77.

Xiang, Biao. “Promoting Knowledge Exchange Through DiasporaNetworks (The Case of the People’s Republic of China),”Report to the Asian Development Bank, ESRC Centre onMigration, Policy and Society (COMPAS), University ofOxford, March, 2005.

Zhao, Suisheng. A Nation-State by Construction. Stanford, Calif.:Stanford University Press, 2004.


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