The Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Maclaurin Buildings and Great Dome. Credit: Ken Lane, Creative Commons
The ongoing deterioration in the U.S.-China relationship has left America’s research universities scrambling to adjust. After decades of building ties with China, universities are unsure how to deal with the growing calls to decouple the U.S. and Chinese economies, especially in science and technology. If they fail to respond to anxieties in government and industry over technology leakage to China, and to American concerns over President Xi Jinping’s increasingly repressive regime, its human rights violations in Xinjiang, Tibet, and Hong Kong, and the Chinese military buildup in East Asia, public support for the universities’ key role in the U.S. research and innovation system will erode.
But the wrong response could end up badly damaging the roots of American scientific and technological strength, including the openness of our universities to dynamic young researchers from China and elsewhere.
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Robert Lighthizer, the U.S. Trade Representative under Donald Trump, reflects on his decision to launch the trade war with China and begin the process of "strategic decoupling" — a process he says the U.S. must see through to the end.
