Introduction

The growing magnitude of global challenges such as climate change, pandemics, food insecurity, and unsustainable energy use has accentuated the importance of global scientific cooperation. China is today the world’s largest producer of scientific publications, and is expected to further increase R&D spending as a proportion of GDP in coming years (Wagner & Cai, 2022). Chinese research is world-leading in several scientific areas, including agricultural, plant and animal science chemistry, materials science, mathematics, engineering, and information science (Chinese Academy of Sciences, 2020). Many Chinese students and researchers have also chosen to go abroad, which has generated financial as well as collaborative opportunities and access to Chinese talent for especially Western universities.

Against this backdrop, strong Sino-foreign collaborations have formed over the past decade. In Australia in 2021, research collaborations with China made up the second largest source of scientific publications (SciVal, 2022a). In the EU, Sweden has the highest share of collaborations that involve researchers based in China. In 2021, researchers based in China were the 5th largest source of external collaborators for Sweden, and the rate of collaboration has steadily grown for the past decade (SciVal, 2022b). Such collaborations form part of a global network based on shared research interests, access to research funding and infrastructure, and to maximise prestige by collaborating with elite scientists (Wagner, 2018). Yet with increasing geopolitical tensions, governments, research institutions, and individuals are increasingly called upon to address a proliferating array of challenges associated with scientific collaboration with China.

Geopolitical contestation has been increasingly salient since Xi Jinping came to power in China in 2012, intensifying during the Trump presidency, before worsening during the COVID-pandemic. The USA has declared an intent to counter China’s military development, restrict its access to high-end technology, and compete for influence in world institutions (The White House, 2022). The EU has labelled China as both a “cooperation partner” and “systemic rival”, seeing China’s governance system as a threat to Europe’s strategic autonomy (European Commission, 2019). Since 2017, the Australian government has implemented measures to mitigate national security risks in its institutions, including universities, especially from China (Department of Home Affairs, 2018).

Scientific research has been implicated in this geopolitical turn as it is viewed as a source of national competitiveness, important for maintaining national security, and a strategic instrument of influence in international politics. Governments are raising new barriers aimed at stemming cross-border collaboration and protecting national interests. Some literature has demonstrated how US-China tensions concerns have affected the productivity of US scientists in life sciences (Jia et al., 2022). Yet even as US-China tensions spiralled during the pandemic, in 2020, research collaborations increased, including between the USA and China (Lee & Haupt, 2020) and Australia and China (Laurenceson & Zhou, 2020). By 2022, Sino-American publications had however decreased while Sino-European had increased (Wagner & Cai, 2022). Pulled in different directions under strong, contradictory forces, global science and the norms that shape it are today in flux (Marginson, 2022a).

To date, most studies investigating the nexus of science and geopolitics have focused on the USA (Jia et al., 2022; Lee & Haupt, 2020, 2021). Some studies have focused on other advanced science nations, for example, Australia (Laurenceson & Zhou, 2020), the UK (Adams et al., 2022), and Sweden (Shih & Forsberg, 2023). But there is limited comparative research on approaches to internationalisation amid geopolitical tensions. This paper bridges the gap by illuminating the dimensions of variation in country-level responses to this situation by comparing the cases of Sweden and Australia by answering the following questions: Who responds to the challenges? By what means? And to what ends are responses directed? The comparison illuminates differences in the actors, methods, and goals of responses to the intensifying geopolitics of scientific collaboration.

Relevant literature

China’s contested scientific rise

China’s rise as a global scientific powerhouse has received significant attention in higher education circles (Marginson, 2022a; Shih & Forsberg, 2023). In terms of the number of scientific publications, it is the largest knowledge-producing nation in the world, and China invests more in research and development than the EU as a whole (Schwaag Serger et al., 2021). However, the reversal to stricter authoritarian governance of China has in recent years started to raise concerns abroad regarding how to manage academic collaboration with China. This paper draws on, and adds to, both policy-focused and scholarly work on research internationalisation in the context of China’s role in global science.

Policy documents seeking to outline research principles and guidelines have offered preliminary analysis of the challenges facing research collaboration amid geopolitical competition (JASON, 2019; European Commission 2022). Policy-oriented studies have identified a range of specific grey areas arising in international research (Shih et al., 2020). These works have typically framed the challenges to include risks related to security and national competitiveness (e.g. Lee & Haupt, 2020), violations of research integrity and ethics (e.g. JASON, 2019), and encroachment on academic freedom (e.g. European Commission, 2019). Analysis from policy think tanks has generally supported government intervention (e.g. Joske, 2018), while academics have called for broadened involvement of faculty with area expertise in university governance processes regarding internationalisation (e.g. Heathershaw et al., 2022), and a small number of institutions have sought to minimise government intervention by publishing guidelines to for on engagement with China (e.g. MIT China Strategy Group, 2022).

The Chinese Communist Party’s own stated policy agendas have provided fodder for Western advocates of a general decoupling. While the nature of China’s international ambitions remains debated, under General Secretary Xi Jinping, China has explicitly pursued “civil-military fusion” and self-reliance to advance growth and to limit its vulnerability to international technology embargo (Xi, 2022). This policy agenda implies a shift away from the Chinese Ministry of Education’s promotion since the 1980s of expanding international collaboration. At the 2023 Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference and National People’s Congress, PRC government officials emphasised that science and technology are the driving force for self-reliance and development (Mallapaty, 2023). Although China’s own response to the rise of geopolitical competition lies beyond the scope of this paper, science and technology is an increasingly salient concern in the Xi’s expansive concept of “comprehensive national security” (Xi, 2022).

China’s scientific and technological rise, coupled with its increasing authoritarianism, has prompted Western responses oriented towards both competition for geopolitical leadership and clashes in norms on issues concerning democracy, human rights, and economic openness. The result has been greater uncertainty for international collaboration in research between the world’s major science nodes (Marginson, 2022a). Scholars have already noted a significant human toll from such developments. Lewis (2021) has noted the “criminal taint” attached to scientists with national, birth, ethnic, and other connections to China under the US Department of Justice’s “China Initiative”, set up in 2018 to target economic espionage and technology theft. Cheng (2020) has likewise detailed the severe pressures on individuals engaged in global science because of the expanding national security imperatives of the Chinese and American governments.

The responses to China-related research challenges examined in this paper highlight how extensive international ties between research groups nested in various national contexts with different institutional conditions is recalibrating global science conditions.

Scientific nationalism and scientific globalism

The field of higher education studies has noted broadly emerging conflicts between national and global domains in recent years (see Wagner et al., 2015; Marginson, 2018). Researchers have identified intrinsic norms that scientists abide by in their practices irrespective of country borders Merton (1973 [1942]) noted that scientists were driven by communism, universalism, disinterestedness, and organised scepticism. Anderson et al. (2010), however, have illustrated the existence of a multitude of different norms that scientists subscribe to Marginson (2022a) identifies the paradoxical relationship between the openness that is exhibited by Chinese researchers in international collaborations, but the political control they adhere to at home. The conflict has been framed within the discourses of scientific nationalism and scientific globalism.

Sá and Sabzalieva (2018:151) define scientific globalism as where “science is characterised as a global endeavour with norms deriving from the scientific community, cutting across political, ethnic and cultural borders”. In this view, “science is not a means to an end but a quest for discovery, oriented towards universalist ideas such as the betterment of human society”. According to scientific globalism’s logic, scientific projects are transnational where scientific advancement produces global aggregate benefits and are not limited to individual nations. Similarly, Lee and Haupt (2021:311) argue that scientific globalism “assumes that global networks exist outside of national systems, and thus, collaboration can transcend domestic agendas and policies”. These observations accord with Wagner (2018) who argues that scientists tend to be loyal to advancing science through collaboration, rather than to national prestige or political ties, and can also be glimpsed in the conformity that often occurs in epistemic science networks (Weatherall & O’Connor, 2021).

Scientific globalism contrasts with scientific nationalism. Sá and Sabzalieva (2018:152) write that in scientific nationalism, “support for science accrues from and is intended to derive benefits to nation-states”, and is zero-sum, for example, national science investment to assist the nation-state to become more competitive in knowledge-driven capitalism by fostering innovation and protecting national security. As Lee and Haupt (2021) explain, scientific nationalism focuses on the benefits science can produce for the nation. Governments tend to intervene in science to align with what they deem to be in the national interest.

However, not all governments respond the same way. Wagner et al. (2015) found Australia and the Scandinavian countries to be among those that maintain stronger national organisation of science, while the USA and most large European countries showed a stronger influence from global science. Studies have recently shown policy communities and research sectors in various countries irrespective of size have used different tools to respond to the challenges of higher education engagement with China (Lee & Haupt, 2021; Shih & Forsberg, 2023), reflecting this variation in approaches to international scientific collaboration.

Scientific nationalism does not necessarily mean that scientific research is undertaken solely in the nation isolated from the global community. As Shih (2022a) suggests, international scientific collaboration is encouraged by national governments but subjected to national aims. Wagner et al. (2015) explain the process as characterised by scientists operating in a global scientific ecosystem, where they seek out collaborators and shared areas of research interest, while having to manage the national institutional structures where they work. Similarly, Marginson (2022c:1567–1568) writes that while national governments seek to use science for national gain, “global referencing by scientists is encouraged by those same national governments, for whom ‘internationalisation’ promises access to the cutting edge of technological innovation”.

In sum, amidst sharpening geostrategic competition, global scientific activity is facing increasing pressure to serve national interests and comply with the expanding scope of national security in multiple locations. These pressures can conflict with the humanistic ideals of global science, as well as with principles of academic freedom and institutional autonomy (Shih, 2022b). However, how these pressures are playing out in different countries, across different dimensions, has not yet been systematically analysed. This paper offers an initial attempt to fill this gap by examining who has responded to the challenges in the two countries, by what means, and to what ends.

Three dimensions of response

Building on existing analyses of the competing forces of scientific globalism and nationalism, this study illustrates how some of these tensions have played out in practice in relation to China. As shown below, within each national context, the nexus between open international research collaboration and competing national security imperatives varies along three key dimensions: actors (who responds), methods (by what means), and goals (to what ends). Figure 1 illustrates multiple dimensions that shape national institutional responses.

Fig. 1
figure 1

Three dimensions of responses to geopolitical challenges to international science

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Actors involved in range from the local to global level (Marginson, 2022b). The response can be left up to the individual, as is commonly the case for the exclusion of content from initial ethical review risk matrices, or it may be subject to researcher oversight, such as in human research ethics review processes. Epistemic groups moreover play an important role such as peer networks, or academic societies in scientific boundary drawing (Weatherall & O’Connor, 2021). Alternatively, responses may be formulated collectively by university departments, universities central administrations, groups of universities, funders, or whole sectors (Shih et al., 2020). Finally, decisions involve government as the main actor—from local authorities up to sanctions regimes, or discretionary prerogatives of national security agencies or the political executive.

Goals can range from “open science” in which scientists operate completely freely from state influence to tackle common problems, to “national security”, in which states exercise high levels of control over science by invoking the prerogatives of the survival of the state. In between lies a portfolio of other goals that actors may pursue. Some of these goals associate more closely with open science, such as academic freedom and institutional autonomy, ethical principles, and social justice. Others such as economic development and national competitiveness and defence align more with the national security side.

Methods of response include a diverse set of measures. At one end of the spectrum is voluntary discretion, including the decisions of individual academics and collectives who voluntarily align with positions and practices. At the opposite end are regulatory and legal frameworks that enforce compliance, such as export controls, disclosure obligations, or government vetoes of projects. In between lies a spectrum of potential options that ranges from information sharing, awareness raising, and voluntary codes of conduct, to formal institutional guidance and policies, compulsory training designed to raise risk awareness, and various levers to recalibrate funding incentives.

Method

This paper’s empirical investigations follow a qualitative design centred on a comparative study of Swedish and Australian responses to challenges with Chinese research collaborations. Sweden and Australia are comparable research environments across many dimensions. The two countries have a similar number of universities (Australia: 43; Sweden: 50), and per capita GDP around USD$60,000. Both countries rely on international collaboration to drive a global profile in scientific research due to their relatively small populations (Sweden 10.3 million; Australia 25.9 million). In Australia, between 2017 and 2022, 57.1% of scholarly outputs included international collaborators, while in Sweden it was 65.1% (SciVal, 2022a, b).

While geographically distant, the collaborative linkages of Sweden and Australia are broadly similar. Sweden’s geographical location and EU membership make European partners natural collaborators. Due to historical linkages with the UK, the USA, and Europe, Australia’s largest collaborative partners, apart from China, are the USA and UK (Marginson, 2018). Both countries’ research sectors have significantly increased their relative shares of research collaborations with Chinese counterparts in the last two decades, as part of broader internationalisation. Between 2012 and 2021, co-authored publications increased by 215% and 274% for Sweden-China and Australia-China, respectively. Across all academic disciplines, researchers in China are the second largest group of international collaborators in Australia, and in Sweden, Chinese research collaborations ranked fifth overall in 2021 (SciVal, 2022a, b).

While the level of collaborative linkages is broadly similar, Australia and Sweden face different regional political environments. As located in the Asia–Pacific, Australia is more exposed than Sweden to the rapidly shifting economic and strategic shifts, which have contributed to public and elite concern about the security threat that China poses (Lowy Chubb, 2022; Institute, 2022). Additionally, Australia has been subject to ongoing trade sanctions after the Australian government called for an inquiry into the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic in April 2020. Sweden too has encountered PRC economic coercion and aggressive diplomacy, and Swedish public opinion has been solidly negative towards China (Ruhlig et al., 2020). Australia has sought in recent years to strengthen its security alliance with the USA, while Sweden recently applied for NATO membership.

Data collection

The study was carried out between 2017 and 2022 during which the authors have participated in discussions and initiatives at the national levels in Sweden and Australia related to managing Chinese collaborations. Publication data from SciVal formed the initial basis of understanding the patterns of Swedish–Chinese and Australian-Chinese collaborations. Official documents formed an initial basis upon which to identify various responses on the state and the organisational levels. Documents include national legislative instruments, advisory materials such as university guidelines for international collaboration, and policy statements from politicians, government agencies, and universities. Interviews were conducted with stakeholders including government officials, university senior management, and academics in Sweden and Australia. The interviews were not recorded; however, detailed summaries were made. The interviews were semi-structured focusing on motives for collaborations and challenges and responses. In total, we conducted interviews with 21 persons on the Swedish side, and 24 on the Australian side, from December 2017 to March 2022.

Data analysis

The study was designed to follow an abductive process (Tavory & Timmermans 2014). The thematic areas of interest, such as methods, goals, challenges, and responses, were identified via a combination of the data outlined about to identify the approaches Australia and Sweden were taking. This led to a preliminary understanding of how Australia’s more compliance heavy and Sweden’s more bottom-up and discretionary approach reflected a range of different approaches to managing higher education engagement with China. This method enabled us to pinpoint areas where sparse information about these different responses necessitated further inquiry, especially to understand the factors that shape the approaches. Interviews on the Swedish side focused on understanding the processes involved in collaboration, including the handling of opportunities and challenges. Interviews on the Australian side concentrated initially on what the political challenges of deteriorating relations with China posed for higher education collaboration. A literature analysis contributed to a better understanding of matters observed regarding collaborations.

Empirical cases

Sweden

Sweden’s declared approach

Swedish-Chinese collaborations have dramatically increased in quantity and quality. The view of these collaborations has also changed over time. As noted by a program officer at a Swedish funder:

The collaboration grew significantly during a time when everyone wanted to work with China. But over time the growing authoritarian tendencies in China, the lack of perceived commitment from Chinese policy actors, and negative media coverage have made researchers and universities more negative.

Around 2018, Swedish media started to pay more attention to security risks associated with research collaborations with Chinese actors. The reasons were partly the emerging stories coming from other parts of the world such as Australia and the USA (e.g. Rubinsztein-Dunlop et al., 2019). Concerns focused on issues such as industrial and research espionage, collaborations with military organisations in China, thousand talent programs, and infringements on academic freedom. By then, the Swedish government had already initiated the codification of its approach to various matters related to China. This resulted in 2019 in the communication: Approach to matters related to China (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 2019), which was also considered the government’s view on China collaboration. This document was not labelled a Swedish strategy on China because the government was committed to follow the one developed by the EU in the document EU-China: A strategic outlook (European Commission, 2019) where China was described as collaborator, competitor, and systemic rival. But the Swedish government’s communication stated Sweden’s approach to research and higher education engagements with China as follows:

It is important for Sweden to have access to advanced education, research and innovation environments in China ... Chinese students, researchers and innovators make valuable contributions to Swedish universities, higher education institutions and companies in Sweden. In this area, cooperation with China involves particular challenges in relation to ethics, academic freedom and intellectual property protection, and to links to China’s military sector regarding, for example, the possibility of transferred technologies being used for military purposes.

The communication (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 2019:19) also stated:

Responsibility for cooperation with China in research and education, for gathering relevant knowledge and for addressing the challenges that arise lies with higher education institutions and the research-intensive business sector.

This statement clearly signalled that the Swedish government and the Ministry of Education and Research would not take a proactive stance on how Swedish research actors collaborate with Chinese actors. The collaboration was described as important but it was the responsibility of the research actors to manage such collaborations and ensure they were conducted in an appropriate manner.

Increasing challenges and growing concerns over Chinese collaborations

By 2020, concerns had been raised from several media outlets about the risk of espionage, and associations with military linked research actors in China, along with possible links with human rights violations. Some examples that received widespread attention in Swedish media included:

  • Karolinska Institutet and its collaboration with Beijing Genomics Institute during beginning of the Covid-pandemic to set up a National Pandemic Centre in Sweden.Footnote 1

  • The former Swedish ambassador to China (Anna Lindstedt) which sought to find a solution to the imprisoned Swedish citizen Gui Minhai case through a Chinese business man. For this, Lindstedt was later indicted for arbitrariness during negotiations with a foreign power, but was exonerated in court. Liu was also closely associated with setting up collaboration between Nanjing University and Uppsala University.Footnote 2

  • A study by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute noted that Sweden is one of the countries in the Western world with highest rates of university-PLA ties.Footnote 3

  • The Swedish Security Service mentioned in their annual reports from 2019 to 2021 that the biggest threats to cybersecurity came from China, Russia, and Iran. However, few details were provided about the threats.Footnote 4

Academic sector responses

Swedish universities have struggled to deal with the situation. A university vice president noted that:

The government needs to give us some more concrete directions and tell us where the red lines are.

However, historically Swedish education and research ministers have refrained from intervening directly in what is considered university business. Freedom of research is enshrined in the Swedish constitution. This gives researchers at Swedish universities significant discretion in choosing which research topics, partners, and methods they want to use. Moreover, Sweden also has teacher’s privilege, which has been codified in law, and gives the individual researcher the full rights to their own publicly funded research, including intellectual property rights. For corporate funded research, there are other conditions with stricter rules on IP rights for researchers/inventors. However, corporate-academic research collaborations only constitute 7.4% (2018–2021) of total research publications. The share, nonetheless, is likely higher as a part of that research might not be published.

Existing laws govern the appropriateness of research such as data protection, patient safety, animal testing, export control, ethics approval, or research responsibility. These laws stipulate that various conditions need to be met to conduct research in Sweden. When research is conducted across national borders, it is not always clear what needs to be adhered to. For example, countries have different legislation when it comes to ethics approval. In these interfaces, researchers have considerable room to choose the appropriate response to differences in legislation and practices between countries. Although a program manager at the Swedish research council noted that “we abide by the principle that the rules of the country with strictest ones should be followed in international research collaborations”, an evaluation of Swedish-Chinese collaborative projects by the Swedish Foundation for International Cooperation in Research and Higher Education (STINT) showed that this is frequently not the case (see Shih & Forsberg, 2023).

The deviation from established practices is not necessarily done intentionally by researchers, but rather differences in legislations, research practices between contexts and disciplines, and incentive structures create grey zones. Given these challenges, a university vice president identified that “the researcher needs to have the capability to exercise sound judgement in decision making processes”. Such decisions require considering the scientific benefits of collaboration (e.g. research impact, training of junior researchers, access to resources), but also risks such as national security, reputational risk, academic freedom, and intellectual property (see Shih et al., 2020). Hence in Sweden, much of the responsibility has been placed on individual researchers in exercising sound judgement in research collaborations with Chinese counterparts. Such behaviour is often informed by documents developed for guiding research practices in specific disciplines or general documents on research integrity.

Towards guidelines as part of seeking autonomy and continued collaboration

The complexity of the situation has provided various challenges for the academic sector. Universities are not supposed to undertake intelligence activities. Any espionage activities fall under the jurisdiction and responsibility of state intelligence actors, mainly the Swedish Security Service. Until January 2023, no cases of espionage have been uncovered in the Swedish academic sector. Some of the main challenges, as stated by a university administrator, have instead been: Reputational risk is a considerable concern for university leadership; We don’t know enough about China and what the actors want or; There is a reluctance to work with researchers in China, due to moral reasons.

Amidst these challenges, STINT together with Lund University, Karolinska Institutet and KTH Royal Institute of Technology took the initiative to provide some directions in international collaborations for universities and researchers in Sweden (Shih et al., 2020). In 2022, the Directorate-General for Research and Innovation of the European Commission also published the document Tackling R&I foreign interference. Here the STINT document together with the guidelines provided by the German Rectors’ Conference (2020) and by Universities UK (UUK, 2020) was identified by the European Commission (2022) as examples of good governance practices.

The European Commission document provided recommendations for how research and innovation actors (R&I) could deal with foreign interference activities. As described by a university administrator: “the report has provided us with some directions on how to approach international research collaborations. But a government official also mentioned: we need to also consider the opportunities not only the risks with cooperation”.

Australia

Australia has seen an explosion in collaborative research with China, as now China is Australia’s second largest collaborative partner in terms of scientific outputs (Laurenceson & Zhou, 2020). However, following a series of high-profile media and think tank exposés from 2017 to 2019 drawing attention to collaborations involving the Chinese military, involvement of Australian-affiliated researchers in PRC talent programs, ethically problematic research, and infringements on academic freedom (Rubinsztein-Dunlop et al., 2019), the federal government launched a series of initiatives to address the security challenges of internationalisation as part of its Counter Foreign Interference Strategy (Department of Home Affairs, 2018). Responses to the research ethics and academic freedom challenges, by contrast, have been largely left to the discretion of institutions and individual academics.

Government powers to regulate international collaboration

Australia’s pre-existing legislative frameworks provide the government extensive compliance powers. The primary tool for regulating research in universities has been The Defence Trade Controls Act of 2012 (DTC Act). This restricts the sharing of “defence and strategic goods and technology”, including “dual-use” technologies with potential military applications. The DTC Act regulates dealings in certain goods, services, and technologies, like those on the Defence and Strategic Goods List which may have a military purpose (Department of Defence, 2021). There has been pressure from the defence community to tighten the DTC Act on research and technology with dual use potential, primarily to counter the increased PLA threat. However, since 2012, there have been no substantive changes, as the Thom independent review of the DTC Act found that it sufficiently balanced scientific openness and defence considerations (Thom, 2018).

The Minister of Education has possessed a veto power over Australian Research Council (ARC) grants since 2001 under the ARC Act. However, by convention, these were rarely invoked until 2018, when then-Minister for Education Simon Birmingham blocked the funding for 11 humanities projects. In December 2020, then-Minister for Education Dan Tehan announced that he had reserved approval of 18 science projects pending advice from national security agencies, before blocking five applications worth $500,000 on national security grounds. Packham (2021) reported that the cancelled projects included collaborators affiliated with PLA linked Chinese universities.

The ARC has expanded due diligence on international collaboration, which includes requiring funding applicants to disclose foreign financial support and affiliations with foreign universities, governments, and talent programs, and expanding engagement with Australia’s domestic security service, the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) (Dent et al., 2021). The academic community and university leaders have expressed frustration that there is a lack of clear criteria for this decision-making process (Hurst, 2021). The primary goal of the exercise of ministerial vetoes and security referrals has been an interactive combination of national security concerns, and the pursuit of domestic political goals. The initial ministerial vetoes in 2018 reflected conservative cultural-political concerns, and only later evolved to encompass security-related risks (Clarke, 2022).

In 2020, the passage of the Foreign Relations Act empowered the Foreign Minister to cancel partnerships between Australian and international universities, deemed contrary to Australia’s national interest and foreign policy objectives, and established a registration scheme for “foreign arrangements”. While the veto is yet to cancel higher education collaborations with China, the Act reflects the government’s concern that direct regulation is required to ensure international collaboration is in the national interest. In 2022, Australia’s Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security (PJCIS) recommended that the Foreign Minister investigates a collaboration between Monash University and COMAC, which is a Chinese state-own aerospace company, and cancels the project if deemed to be counter to Australia’s national interest (PJCIS, 2022).

Public funding

The federal government has used public research funding to shape international collaboration. For example, the Australian Department of Industry, Science, Energy and Resources and Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology fund the Australia-China Science and Research Fund, which supports Joint Research Centres between Australian and Chinese institutions to advance science and economic development, such as low-carbon technologies (Department of Industry, Science, Energy and Resources 2021). Since 2021, there is increased public science funding to further Australia’s defence objectives and economic self-reliance. As an Australian university senior management figure described in a September 2021 interview with the authors:

Universities were already subject to defence expert controls, but in recent years the government has been more actively promoting collaboration with “like-minded partners.”

In November 2021, former Prime Minister Morrison announced the Blueprint for Critical Technologies, which aims to position Australia as a leading nation in critical technologies regarded as vital for economic prosperity and defence, and includes $100 million over ten years for Quantum research. The Blueprint promotes collaboration in critical technologies with “like-minded” partners who share liberal-democratic values. The government has not placed additional regulation on universities but expects universities to implement additional safeguards to align research with the national interest (Critical Technologies Policy Coordination Office 2021).

Responses to these funding trends from the university sector and academic community have been mixed. The Group of Eight (2021) university peak body welcomed the Blueprint for science funding to advance research and innovation, while remaining cautious of increased government control over universities as they continue to promote global engagement.

Taskforce: state security agencies and university management

Another key element of Australia’s response has been a new body comprising national security officials and stakeholders to formulate measures to address foreign interference in research. The University Foreign Interference Taskforce (UFIT) was established in August 2019 as an interface between universities, the government, the National Counter-Foreign Interference Coordinator, and a senior officer from ASIO. As an Australian Deputy Vice Chancellor described in an interview, the UFIT process:

[P]laces extra scrutiny on collaboration with China, especially the purpose and partners of the research. The government’s starting position seems to be that collaborations with China are risky and potentially contrary to Australia’s national interests, which in turn means China collaborations pose more risks to a university’s reputation.

The UFIT’s key output has been the Guidelines to Counter Foreign Interference in the University Sector, which were first released in 2019 (updated in 2021). Its primary goal is to raise risk awareness among key constituencies to guide responsible international collaboration. The Guidelines reflect the broad principles and practices agreed upon by Australia’s security services and university sector in response to issues of “foreign interference”, defined as “activities are carried out by, or on behalf of a foreign actor, which are coercive, clandestine, deceptive or corrupting and are contrary to Australia’s sovereignty, values and national interests”. The Guidelines draw attention to:

  • Universities’ governance and risk frameworks, including the need for universities to set up “foreign interference” reporting mechanisms

  • Universities’ responsibility to raise awareness of broadly-defined “foreign interference” risks and the dual uses of research, including potential military applications

  • Enhanced due diligence processes on international partnerships including partner background checks, and requiring staff disclosures of foreign political affiliations and conflicts of interest

  • Strengthened cybersecurity measures

From the perspective of the Australian government and security agencies, the UFIT’s primary purpose has been to expand risk awareness among university senior management and academics, and to legitimise a more circumscribed set of international collaborations.

Additionally, the aim of universities’ participation has been to preserve institutional autonomy and forestall further direct regulation. Accordingly, university research administrators have placed additional scrutiny on scientific collaboration with China. In 2020, the University of Adelaide stated that seven research collaboration projects with overseas institutions have been cancelled or not pursued, including a cryptography collaboration with funding from a Chinese multinational because of potential military applications. Furthermore, universities, including the University of Queensland (2022), now require higher research degree students and academic staff to disclose foreign university affiliations or where they are conducting sensitive research, such as with potential military uses.

Public inquiries and media

Public inquiries have led to increased scrutiny on universities’ international engagement and risk mitigation strategies. In 2020, Australia’s PJCIS launched an inquiry into “National Security Risks Affecting Australian Higher Education and Research Sector”, which concluded in 2022. The inquiry drew submissions from Australia’s 39 public universities and testimony from senior university management. The process elicited acknowledgements of the existence of national security risks, assertions of international collaboration’s benefits, in addition to committee members scrutinising compliance with the Guidelines.

University responses to mitigating national security and human rights risks involved in collaboration with China have responded to potential reputation damage. For example, following increased scrutiny from the PJCIS and media reports in 2019 highlighting two Australian universities’ involvement in collaborative research with Chinese institutions on biometric recognition of ethnicities including Uighurs, the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) reviewed its partnership with Chinese technology giant CETC, and ceased one of its lines of research (UTS, 2019).

The PJCIS inquiry focused on university responses to protect academic freedom for students and academics from China. It drew on a Human Rights Watch (HRW) report (McNeill, 2021) which highlighted channels of reporting of campus speech to PRC party-state authorities and associated threats of punishment against students, staff, and visitors who express dissenting viewpoints, and against family members in China. The university sector first responded to this issue with ad hoc statements of commitment to academic freedom.

Universities Australia (UA) (2021)—the body representing all 39 of Australia’s universities—proclaimed “zero tolerance for behaviour that [seeks] to undermine academic freedom”. While there had been numerous reports of such practices on Australian campuses dating back to 2014, the delay suggested the HRW report, combined with Australia’s changing political environment, prompted the statement. Second, the statement appeared to shirk responsibility and attribute the problems to victims failing to speak up, claiming there is “zero tolerance” for such practices at Australian universities.

Due to growing reputational risks, universities have expanded academic freedom protections. In 2022, the University of Western Australia (2022) implemented a new Foreign Interference Policy (Section 9.2) as part of its Code for the Protection of Freedom of Speech and Academic Freedom to raise awareness of support for students subject to foreign interference.

Discussion

The Swedish and Australian cases illustrate divergent responses to challenges with research collaboration with research actors in China. Western responses have oscillated between taking harder measures against the unjust (real or perceived) appropriation of state-funded Western knowledge-findings and IP by Chinese actors and retaining open science practices. Wagner et al. (2015) argue that Australia and the Scandinavian countries take similar approaches to international scientific collaboration with a stronger national organisation of science. However, as we show, the Australian and Swedish policy communities and research sectors have used different tools to respond to the challenges of HE engagement with China, which reflects variation in their approaches to international scientific collaboration amid intensified geopolitical competition.

Australia’s responses have been largely top-down, with government, national security agencies, and university managers and leaders as the main actors, and more securitised than Sweden. In part, this likely reflects the challenging strategic environment Australia faces amid a rapidly shifting regional environment. This approach mirrors in some aspects the US Department of Justice’s “China Initiative” (see Lewis, 2021) and generally follows Australia’s hawkish stance against China since 2017. Methods in Australia have ranged between the direct exercise of ministerial veto authority and the creation of ministerial powers, requirements for national interest statements, and disclosure of collaborative arrangements and foreign affiliations, new guidelines, and increased funding for defence research. Principles have focused on national security. There is still recognition of international collaboration’s importance, which universities have stressed. Academics, journalists, and human rights campaigners have emphasised the need to reverse the erosion of academic freedom and research ethics where research risks complicity in human rights abuses.

In a national survey, Olczak (2022) found that Swedes have negative perspectives of the Chinese state. Although there was no specific question on science collaboration, 41 per cent of respondents disagreed that Sweden should cooperate with China, with only 27 per cent agreeing. Yet, research collaboration levels with China are high, and the Swedish government has generally not been very critical. Government actors have refrained from providing guidelines for collaborations with research actors in China. This leaves room for the research sector to shape responses. For example, on a national level in Sweden, several discussions have been held by national university organisations, and initiatives have been taken by individual universities to set a direction for the Swedish academic sector. This led to the STINT document on responsible internationalisation (Shih et al., 2020). Thus, in Sweden, goals related to openness, scientific globalism, and academic freedom have been more prominent drivers of responses to China-related challenges. An important question is whether this is enough to manage the complexity in the current global landscape, and especially the issues related to ethics dumping, dual use, or lack of institutional value creation.

The findings demonstrate variation in countries’ responses along three key dimensions to the challenges geopolitical tensions pose to internationalisation with China. The variation reflects the clash between national interests and the ideals of science as universal and open. The national security-openness tension exemplifies a dilemma that can cause the erosion of global scientific development, impinge on academic freedom as governments expand control over academic collaboration, and risk ethnic discrimination (Cheng, 2020; Lewis, 2021; Shih, 2022b). The research conducted here informs policymakers and the academic sector about the nature and impact of responses to Western-Chinese research collaborations. This is important to further understand as international research collaboration generally continues to increase and more studies are needed to understand how their management can be improved for meaningful outcomes (Shih et al., 2020). While international research collaboration is generally viewed as important, political measures to restrict cooperation and the more cautious approaches of university leaders have become more prominent.

Further research

The three dimensions of responses outlined in this paper capture significant variation across the similar research environments of Sweden and Australia. The Australian case suggests the greater the role that government actors have in formulating and implementing responses to such challenges, the more compliance-based the response will be. In contrast, as Sweden illustrates, the influence of university and academic bodies over international engagement points to more discretionary and collective responses. The consensus model of decision-making often leads to less action being taken at the institutional level and perhaps also an inability to find solutions to complex problems. However, explaining this variation will require further research based on a broader cross-section of national case studies. Future research can examine the factors that may explain such variation, such as the regional geopolitical environment, security alliances, political institutions, state-society norms, the relationship of industry to higher education, and cultural norms. Such inquiries may begin by identifying the positioning of other countries’ responses to the grey areas, uncertainties, tensions, and challenges associated with international academic collaboration amidst rising geopolitical tensions.

To benefit from international collaboration, research sectors through shared responsibility need to manage challenges nationally and across borders. The research community needs to develop guidelines that consider the increasingly multipolar research landscape amid geopolitical tensions. The research sector’s inability to handle matters related to data security, multiple affiliations, or ethics dumping can mean that national political forces are likely to use additional compliance. Additional research could help to illuminate the impact, including on collaborative patterns at national, institutional, and individual levels, and the reasons why certain measure will have an effect.