BEIJING: The China-U.S. Agreement on Cooperation in Science and Technology signed in 1979 was one of the first deals reached between Beijing and Washington after the two sides started to normalize their diplomatic ties.
Over the decades, cooperation of the two countries in science and technology, which has seen steady development in scope and scale, has grown into one of the underpinnings of the overall China-U.S. relations. According to the U.S. National Science Foundation, China and the United States are now each other’s biggest international peers in co-authored papers. The two sides have also benefited from working closely with one another in such cutting-edge programs as Daya Bay Reactor Neutrino Experiment, electron positron collider and nuclear fusion experiments.
While a robust science and technology cooperation between China and the United States can serve the common interests of both countries, it also bears great significance for global scientific progress in fields like in genome research, quantum computing and space science.
However, over the past four years, the previous U.S. administration left no stone unturned to sabotage the normal cooperation and exchanges in science and technology between the two sides by bullying Chinese tech firms, excluding Chinese scientists, and smearing Chinese students in the United States as spies. The effort to stoke confrontation between China and the United States continues despite the departure of the previous U.S. administration. –Agencies
