【英文】兰德报告：探索与中国合作研究的机遇和挑战（17页）

UK and Chinese research ecosystems have become increasingly integrated since the early 2000s, with  increasing numbers of Chinese academics working in UK universities, growing levels of co-published  papers and a surging number of joint UK-China research centres. In particular, metrics of research  outputs show that collaboration greatly flourished during the so-called ‘golden era’ in UK-China relations  (2014–2019).However, some indicators are today starting to show a potential slow down, if not decline, of this trend.  Our analysis of joint UK-China research centres reveals that starting in 2019 and continuing into 2020  and 2021, the number of newly set-up joint UK-China research centres sharply declined. Further studies  of other research collaboration outputs after 2019 are however needed to corroborate and validate this  emerging finding.

The most common academic topic researched across all joint UK-China centres is engineering (28  joint research centres), followed by materials science (17) and environment/ecology (17), out of a total  156 joint research centres. A different categorisation and breakdown of STEM-focused research centres  into the 17 sectors identified in the National Security and Investment Act (2021) shows that synthetic  biology (47) is the most common discipline of interest for UK-China joint research centres, followed  by advanced materials (21), energy (15), engineering (12), artificial intelligence (8), satellite and space  technologies (8), communications (4), transport (4) and data infrastructure (3). This broadly coincided  with the seven priority sectors defined by the UK Science and Innovation Network in China in 2017.  However, high levels of political focus on and funding for STEM research in China and historical academic  strengths in these topics may also explain the skew of joint UK-China centres towards STEM disciplines.