US, China renew stalled science cooperation deal

US President-elect Donald Trump with Chinese President Xi Jinping. | Photo credit: archive photo/AP

Washington and Beijing, locked in a fierce economic and political rivalry, renewed a science and technology cooperation agreement for five years on Friday following criticism from critics, including US Republicans, that China enjoyed an advantage .

The signing is part of an effort to stabilize relations just weeks before the inauguration of US President-elect Donald Trump, who has promised to impose huge tariffs on Chinese imports.

The agreement, which dates back to 1979, had been renewed every five years for decades, including during Trump's first term, until last year, when diplomatic relations between the two countries were at an all-time low.

Tensions soared that year over an alleged Chinese spy balloon shot down over U.S. airspace, a meeting between Taiwan's president and the speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives and American military aid to Taipei.

But the agreement was nonetheless extended twice by six months until renegotiations could begin.

The protocol “contains new provisions”, notably on data reciprocity, which are the result of months of negotiations, a senior US administration official told journalists on condition of anonymity.

This push for renewal has come even as the United States tries to wean itself off its reliance on Chinese semiconductors and combat state hacks by Beijing.

Cooperation areas

According to the administration official, the new agreement strengthens provisions on security and dispute resolution and contains provisions on the protection of intellectual property.

It also contains an exit clause in the event of non-compliance, and excludes cooperation in the areas of sensitive or emerging technologies.

The United States is limiting its technology exports to China, including semiconductors, in an effort to bolster its own domestic production.

Taken together, the revisions “create the strongest national security safeguards” of any government-to-government scientific cooperation with China, the U.S. official said.

In a report released in September, the Republican-controlled House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party denounced what it saw as a gradual leak of American know-how to China.

In the report, lawmakers said “hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. federal research funding over the past decade have contributed to China's technological advancements and military modernization.”

Although the United States and China are extremely competitive, they have found reasons to cooperate in several major areas, including scientific research, climate change and trafficking in fentanyl, the synthetic drug that is wreaking havoc in the United States. United.

Beijing and Washington have also reestablished direct military-to-military communication, which US President Joe Biden and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping supported during their last meeting on the sidelines of the APEC summit in Lima in mid-November.

Scientific cooperation “is part of the broader competitive relationship we have with the PRC,” the U.S. official said, using the acronym for the People's Republic of China.

“Within this relationship, there are opportunities for limited cooperation in areas that advance U.S. interests,” the official said, such as oceanography, seismology, meteorology and even agriculture and health. including vaccines.

Trump has repeatedly claimed, without evidence, that the COVID-19 pandemic originated from a virus originating in a Chinese laboratory, something Beijing strongly denies.