Speaking at the Center for China and Globalization (CCG) 7th China Global Think Tank Innovation Forum, Panel 2 “What’s next for China-US people-to-people exchange” on December 15, 2022, Professor Da Hsuan Feng proposed the following safeguards for research and intellectual collaborative efforts between US and Chinese academics and researchers.
“The current situation between the United States and China is anything but good…. Indeed, what happened to numerous academics, such as Xing Xiaoxin (郗小星) of Temple University, Chen Gang (陈刚) of MIT, Feng Franklin Tao (陶丰) of Kansas University, Anmin Hu (胡安民) of the University of Tennessee, Sherry Chen (陈霞芬) of the US National Weather Service and last but not least Charles Lieber of Harvard University, to name a few, have no doubt created a profoundly fearful atmosphere all across the board among the academics in the United States to collaborate with counterparts in China.”
“Many of these above-mentioned scientists were essentially caught in some form of legal entanglement. Unless the United States and China truly intend to decouple scientific collaborations altogether, it seems to us that one must find a solution to this rather specific problem.”
About 3 years ago, working with Professor Steven Pei of the University of Houston, both researchers came up with the following proposals:
- Whenever a faculty in the university intends to establish an intellectual relation with a faculty of a foreign university, the Vice President of Research of both universities concerned should establish a written agreement whereby the collaborative work must be clearly specified.
- The intellectual properties which arise from the collaboration must be clearly defined as to who owns it.
- The faculty cannot and must not in a year receive two salaries on any given day.
- At the end of each academic year, there must be a full report submitted to the offices of both Vice President of Research.
- With such or similar safeguards, and for the future of scientific research, we encourage Presidents Biden and Xi to begin to encourage intellectual collaborations again.