As Washington and Beijing lock horns over national security, political friction may be dismantling decades of fruitful shared discovery
In late May, Zhang Ning, founder of TopEdit, a Maryland-based company that provides editing services for academic publications, learned of a troubling development.
The US Congress was discussing a proposal to ban American research institutions from collaborating with certain Chinese entities using federal research funds.
Zhang’s immediate reaction was blunt: “This is absurd.”
Zhang’s exchange took place with a vice-president for a global publishing company during the annual meeting of the Society for Scholarly Publishing in San Diego.
“My first reaction was: is this real? It is ridiculous,” Zhang recalled, adding that even if the bill eventually failed, “it feels as though the world is becoming increasingly irrational”.