Commentary: To renew China-U.S. sci-tech pact benefits both, world

BEIJING, Jan. 16 (Xinhua) -- During the San Francisco summit meeting in November 2023, China and the United States agreed to start consultations on extending the China-U.S. Science and Technology Cooperation Agreement.

The agreement, signed in 1979 and renewed every five years since, has paved the way for sci-tech exchanges between the two countries, which serves the common interests of both sides and meets the common expectations of the international community.

Nevertheless, the renewal of the agreement was opposed by some U.S. politicians who held an ideological bias and chose to ignore the fact that both China and the United States have benefited from it.

As the largest developing country and the largest developed country, China and the U.S. made substantial sci-tech achievements to provide solutions for the global issues such as climate change, environment, ecology, energy, and diseases.

There has been cooperation in some cutting-edge programs, such as Daya Bay Reactor Neutrino Experiment, electron positron collider and nuclear fusion experiments. The sci-tech cooperation between the two sides also bears great significance for global scientific progress in fields such as genome research, quantum computing and space science.

In a latest example, scientists from China's Tianjin University and Georgia Institute of Technology of the U.S. have developed ultrahigh-mobility semiconducting epigraphene on silicon carbide, whose performance is 10 times better than that of silicon. This research has solved the key technical problems that have long hindered the development of graphene electronics and marked a key step forward in graphene chip making.

The U.S. academic community supports and has urged the U.S. government to renew the agreement. Two Stanford University professors have written an open letter to the White House advocating for its renewal. Over 1,000 U.S. scientists signed the letter within a week.

"The United States should renew the Protocol ... because it is in the best interests of the United States," said Steven Kivelson and Peter Michelson in the open letter to U.S. President Joe Biden, dated Aug. 21.

"We can attest that cutting off ties with China would directly and negatively impact our own research, the work of our immediate colleagues, and/or the educational mission of our universities," they said.

Cooperation is the right choice for China and the United States to get along with each other. Under the current circumstances, their common interests are growing rather than declining, and the necessity for cooperation is increasing.

"It can be said that for the two countries and the world, China-U.S. cooperation is not something dispensable or optional. It is a compulsory question that must be addressed in real earnest," said Wang Yi, a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and Chinese foreign minister, while attending the commemoration of the 45th anniversary of China-U.S. diplomatic relations in Beijing on Jan. 5.

Cooperation programs have generated fruitful achievements for all parties involved. Renewing the China-U.S. science and technology agreement is definitely in the interests of both countries and the whole world. It would be a huge loss if the efforts failed.