The 2018 China Initiative by the Trump administration complicated procedures and reduced funding for US-China research collaborations. Using Scopus data, we analyze its impact on Chinese research. We find that it significantly lowered the quality of both publications and co-authors of Chinese researchers with prior US collaborations compared to those with prior European collaborations, and reduced yearly citations for affected researchers by 6%. The effect was stronger for high-productivity Chinese researchers in US-dominated fields. While China is at the forefront of the scientific frontier, it still depends more on the US than the reverse.

Philippe Aghion, Celine Antonin, Luc Paluskiewicz, David Stromberg, Xueping Sun, Raphael Wargon and Karolina Westin

11 September 2026

International Economic Review 2026

DOI: 10.1111/iere.70107

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/iere.70107

This work is published under POID and the CEP's Growth programme.