‘Recoupling’ urged on scholarly exchanges

Decline in collaborations likely to have negative impacts in future

Leading scholars from China and the United States have worked extensively over the past two years to revive scholarly exchanges, which were suspended by the pandemic and affected by the “over-securitization” of US-China relations, said Scott Kennedy from the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

As a result, experts in Washington and Beijing have agreed that such exchanges can yield national security benefits, and that the issue is how to calibrate US-China scholarly “recoupling” to strike a balance between yielding the greatest potential of connectivity while minimizing any downsides.

Kennedy, senior adviser and trustee chair in Chinese Business and Economics at CSIS, highlighted these points in US-ChinaScholarly Re coupling: Advancing Mutual Understanding in an Era of Intense Rivalry, a collection of essays published at the end of last month.

Contributed by participants in scholarly conferences and policy community meetings that the CSIS and Peking University organized in 2022 and 2023, the essays identified the “securitization of everything” as “dominant obstacles” to sustained scholarly ties, and appealed that scholarly exchanges must not become collateral damage of national security impulses.

“Over the last two years, there has been a concerted effort by scholars from both China and the United States to stem the tide of scholarly decoupling,” Kennedy wrote.

The CSIS, along with Peking University, has attempted to provide leadership in the rebuilding of bilateral scholarly ties to avoid a more permanent scholarly decoupling, he said.

In 2022, Kennedy and Wang Jisi, founding president of Peking University’s Institute of International and Strategic Studies, engaged in a pair of exchanges meant to break the ice by exploring the role of scholarly exchange in stabilizing US-China relations, which had plunged to the lowest point since the two countries forged diplomatic ties in 1979.

They scaled that up by bringing a large delegation of leading US-China experts to then hosting a similarly large delegation of Chinese experts at the CSIS last year.

Scholars then supplemented the conferences with additional private meetings with government officials, business executives, journalists and other scholars in both capitals.

“We’re deeply worried about scholarly decoupling, about what can be lost and not much gained through the division and separation of what has been a unified global community of experts,” Kennedy said at the launch of the report on March 27.

“So just as the US and China need to find a way to coexist, their scholarly communities need to do so as well.”

The “over-securitization” is restricting a more comprehensive recoupling of ties, creating a “vexing” situation which is stifling research, limiting overseas study, reducing mutual understanding, and harming the national interest of both countries, Kennedy said.

Kennedy argued that although scholarly exchanges among students, faculty, and programs are usually not designed with national security in mind and generate a wide range of societal benefits, they can yield national security benefits over an extended period.

Jie Dalei, a senior research fellow of Peking University’s Institute of International and Strategic Studies, said China-US scholarly exchanges can further national security interests of both sides through addressing intractable problems, emerging issues and transnational challenges.

On the other hand, the national security consequences resulting from miscommunication and miscalculation or from failure in addressing common challenges are “otherwise potentially too catastrophic”, he wrote in an article included in the report.

Andrew Mertha, director of the China Studies Program at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, said an indirect approach to observing and understanding China is inherently distortionary.

“China scholars need to be there, and their scholars need to be here,” Mertha wrote.

Jessica Chen Weiss, a professor of China and Asia-Pacific studies at Cornell University, also pointed out that academic experts in both China and the US have taken the lead in warning against the perils of over-securitization and the collateral damage that overly expansive restrictions can have for beneficial ties.

“An approach that fails to take stock of the benefits and only seeks to minimize the risks of interaction and integration will jeopardize not only shared interests but also each country’s respective national interests,” Weiss wrote.

Weiss noted that ties with China have not just brought economic opportunities and losses, they have also “scored major wins” for humanity.

Weiss proposed that for a brighter future, both countries must focus as much on advancing what is valuable in US-China economic, scientific and technological integration as they do on mitigating risks and costs.

Scott Rozelle, co-director at the Stanford Center on China’s Economy and Institutions, noted that US-China scholarly exchanges are still occurring, but at a much lower level compared with five to 10 years ago, which he said is a “worrying trend”.

A decline in scholarly exchanges is likely to have large negative impacts on growth, equity and happiness in China, the US, and the world as a whole. Hence, it could ultimately be harmful to national security, he wrote.

In the report, the experts have made proposals on how to change the status quo.

Kennedy proposed that to reverse the downward trend in US-China scholarly exchanges, direct, unambiguous public statements should clarify what types of research or scholarly exchanges are not related to national security, and declare that the countries should try to promote scholarly exchanges in these areas.

Mary Gallagher, director of the International Institute at the University of Michigan, highlighted the need for academic institutions to do more to engage the public and policymakers about the benefits of scholarly collaboration with China to the US.

“The case must be made that a complete decoupling of academic collaboration would hurt the United States more than it would hurt China,” Gallagher wrote.