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The UK has scaled back areas of scientific and technological collaboration with China over heightened security risks, even as a senior minister heaped praise on the “strong scientific nation”.
Lord Patrick Vallance, the science and technology minister, said the UK and China had agreed to work together in the “uncontroversial” areas of health, climate, planetary sciences and agriculture.
His comments followed a meeting on Tuesday with Chen Jiachang, China’s vice-minister for science and technology, in Beijing, where the two countries later signed an updated bilateral agreement on areas of collaboration in science and technology.
But a previous agreement, signed in 2017 by then universities minister Jo Johnson, had pledged collaboration in fields including satellites, remote sensing technology and robotics. Those sectors were absent from the latest accord.
Nor did the two sides announce any new funding for joint scientific research. In 2014, the UK-China Research and Innovation Partnership Fund was launched with £200mn in joint funding from London and Beijing.
“Our relationship with China is different from the one in 2017, and we have deliberately gone for areas which we think are not carrying such a security risk,” said Vallance.
“It’s an incredibly strong scientific nation now. Our researchers want to work with them. They want to work with us,” he added.
The pared-back agreement underscores the shift in western capitals towards a more guarded stance on scientific co-operation with China, reflecting concerns over Beijing’s growing technological dominance.
Western policymakers have increasingly warned that China’s advances in areas such as artificial intelligence and robotics are bolstering its military capabilities and allowing it to capture global market share in sectors from electric vehicles to solar panels.
The US and China belatedly signed an extension of their 46-year-old science and technology co-operation pact in December 2024, which was also more limited in scope, during the final weeks of president Joe Biden’s administration.
It included a mutual commitment not to “arbitrarily detain, harass, abuse, or coercively threaten or intimidate” researchers doing work that flows from the agreement.
Vallance said the US had not been consulted on the new UK-China framework, saying it was a bilateral matter.
UK-China relations had been on an upward trend in the first few months of the Labour government, with a flurry of UK ministers visiting Beijing to reopen channels of communication after years of icy relations during the last Conservative government.
But Vallance’s trip comes at a sensitive time, following Beijing’s outburst over the UK government’s handling of the alleged spy case involving two UK citizens accused of spying on MPs for China. The Chinese embassy in London last month said the government evidence released by Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer amounted to “attempts to smear and defame” China.
Chinese officials carried out a campaign of intimidation against the UK’s Sheffield Hallam University to prevent research into alleged human rights violations from being published, it was reported last week. China blocked access to the university’s websites, limiting its ability to recruit students.
The House of Commons foreign affairs select committee intends to examine Chinese government interference in academia, according to remarks made by the committee’s chair, Emily Thornberry, first reported by the Guardian on Tuesday.
The probe would be part of the committee’s wider ongoing review of the UK’s China strategy.
