The Formation and Persistence of China’s International Research Ties Amid Geopolitical Tensions and Global Health Crisis

• In Event: Navigating and negotiating the global higher education internationalization: pathways and tensions in Chinese higher education system

Proposal

This study analyzes the patterns of China’s international research co-authorship network between 2016 and 2021. Through descriptive analysis of Chinese scientists’ international co-publications on Web of science and semi-structured interviews with 18 Chinese scientists who participated in international co-publications since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, this paper firstly describes China’s international collaboration trends in terms of collaborating partners, fields, and patterns, and then explores the factors which affect the formation and persistence of international research ties for Chinese scientists. This study reveals that, the preferential attachment mechanism and homophily mechanism can largely explain China’s formation of ties with international partners, but the geopolitical tensions alongside the COVID-19 epidemic have hindered the persistence of China’s international scientific ties, especially the Sino-US ones. Amid geopolitical tensions and global health crisis, the motivations for international collaboration and the patterns of Chinese scientists’ international collaboration are expected to change.

Author

• Die Hu