The White House's proposed new regulations have angered the American scientific community: blocking scientific cooperation with China will harm the United States

Scientists say that if the White House blocks research cooperation with China, the United States will suffer losses. The Washington Post reported on the 12th that the proposed new regulations by the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) will prohibit the use of federal funding to provide financial support for research cooperation between the United States and China. Many American universities and researchers believe that the new regulations fail to recognize that the United States has fallen behind in key scientific fields, and reducing cooperation may further widen the gap. The Washington Post said that China's research output in cutting-edge fields such as quantum science and artificial intelligence has now surpassed that of the United States. The website of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation of the United States published an article on the 11th stating that China has increasingly improved its ability to efficiently convert innovation investment into output, especially in high-tech and advanced industries that directly compete with the United States.

Analysis of 50000 public opinions by US media: 88% hold negative views on the proposed new regulations

The US Congress passed the so-called "Wolf Amendment" in 2011, which prohibits NASA from cooperating with China. The White House plans to expand the current restrictions on cooperation with China that only apply to NASA to all federal agencies and researchers receiving federal funding. According to The Washington Post, the new regulations to expand restrictions were drafted by OMB and are scheduled to take effect in December this year. It will give political appointees greater funding approval authority, which was previously dominated by the research peer review mechanism. The new regulations also require funded projects to 'serve the President's policy priorities'.

According to the US website Newsmax, the new regulations will prohibit the use of federal grants to fund bilateral or multilateral cooperation projects with "restricted countries" or related entities, unless otherwise provided by federal written law or granted exemptions by agency heads. China is included in this restricted category.

Sun Chenghao, Associate Researcher at the Center for Strategic and Security Studies at Tsinghua University, told Global Times reporters on the 12th that the proposed new regulations by the White House reflect a shift in its technology policy towards China in recent years from a management approach focused on specific fields and "risks" to broader institutional restrictions. If comprehensive restrictions are simply imposed based on the nationality or institutional background of the cooperating parties, it may confuse normal academic exchanges with real security risks

The White House's proposed new regulations have received nearly 500000 public comments, many of which come from American scientists and top scientific institutions. The website of the American journal Science previously published an article stating that researchers are "angry" about the new regulations, and many people are concerned that it will politicize science. The Washington Post's analysis of 50000 public opinions found that approximately 88% hold negative views.

Essentially, it is evading competition

Kevin Stassen, a professor of physics and astronomy at Vanderbilt University in the United States, said, "The National Science Council of the United States will never recommend or consider this strategy, which is essentially an evasion of competition, to be wise." "We must continue to compete when we know that our main competitors are stronger. Otherwise, as China continues to widen the gap, we will become increasingly passive.

I do believe that there are still some members of Congress who think we have a monopoly in the field of knowledge. They think we are still in the era of dealing with the Soviet Union during the Cold War... At that time, we were in a leading position in most technological fields. But now when facing China, the situation is completely different. We are no longer in a leading position in many scientific fields, "said Tobin Smith, Senior Vice President of the Association of American Universities (AAU).

AAU represents the interests of 71 research universities in the United States and Canada, of which 69 are American universities. In mid July, the agency stated in its opinion letter regarding the proposed new regulations for OMB that other countries, including China, are still strengthening international cooperation and research capacity building. If the White House introduces broad restrictions, it will hinder cooperation between the United States and international partners, reduce research efficiency, and make it more difficult for American institutions to attract top global talent. According to an article on the website of the American journal Science, this opinion letter is 47 pages long, making it the longest opinion letter submitted by the association in its 126 year history regarding proposed government measures.

China is becoming a global leader in scientific research and innovation in many fields

The opinion letter submitted by the Quincy Institute for Governance in July listed the possible consequences of implementing the new OMB regulations, including the termination of "scientific cooperation that generally serves the national interests of the United States" in areas such as health and clean energy. "Given that China is becoming a global leader in research and innovation in many fields, these measures will hinder the scientific progress of the United States in these areas. The agency also believes that the new regulations will lead to a lack of awareness among the United States and its scientists about China's technological capabilities, and may prompt top scientists to choose to develop their careers in other countries that are more conducive to international scientific cooperation, including China.

The Washington Post reported that China's research output in cutting-edge fields such as quantum science, artificial intelligence, and biotechnology has surpassed that of the United States. According to data released by the Technology Research Center of Leiden University in the Netherlands, Chinese universities dominate the global research paper rankings, occupying 8 out of the top 10 universities in terms of academic output; Occupying 19 seats among the top 25 universities. According to reports, in 2024, American researchers published approximately 240000 international collaborative scientific and engineering papers, of which about 23% included Chinese collaborators, making China a major international research partner for the United States.

In the field I am in, China's investment in experiments that require a large amount of funding and expert participation is indeed far greater than that of the United States, "said Steven Kivelson, a theoretical physicist at Stanford University in the United States." I went to China to learn about the latest developments in this field