China is Norway’s largest partner in technology research

Nevo

China is becoming increasingly important to Norway as a research country. This was confirmed by NIFU in a recent review of the scientific literature.

In 2019, China overtook the United States as the world’s largest research country in terms of the number of research articles published annually. In the same year, China also became Norway’s largest technology research partner.

This is shown in a recent report by the Nordic Institute for Research and Innovation Studies (NIFU) which takes a closer look at Norway’s research collaborations with China and South Korea. You can read the report here.

NIFU researchers studied the period from 2001 to 2022, focusing on the past 10 years, based on collaborations in scholarly publications covered by the bibliographic database Web of Science.

One of the conclusions drawn by the report’s author, Gunnar Sievertsen, is China’s dominance in technology research. Chinese researchers account for nearly half of all articles in this field.

be cerfull

Research cooperation between China and Norway has been discussed for a long time.

In 2018, Minister of Research and Higher Education Iseline Nybo (V) brought 220 people from the knowledge sector to Beijing to strengthen relations between the two countries.

Now, five years later, the Norwegian Police Security Service (PST) regularly issues warnings to Norwegian research institutions: be careful when you cooperate with Chinese researchers.

When the PST submitted its annual threat assessment They stressed that “Norwegian research and educational institutions are being exploited by foreign countries to map potential sources.”

PST has stated on several occasions that Norwegian educational and research institutions are naive in dealing with their Chinese colleagues. Last summer, said Inger Haugland, head of counterintelligence at PST Aftenposten They see increased awareness of these issues, but:

– There is a very varying degree of awareness. Some research environments still seem naive in the face of what we see as a clear threat, Hoagland said.

accounts for 17 percent

Collaboration between Norwegian and Chinese researchers has increased rapidly. From an almost non-existent relationship at the beginning of the 2000s, more than 1,700 articles were published in 2021 with Norwegian and Chinese researchers as authors. Between 2001 and 2021, a total of 11,500 articles were registered. I showed NIFU report in 2022.

Chinese fellows now participate in 17% of all research articles that have international collaborations behind them. In particular, in the field of climate, environment and technology research, Norwegian and Chinese researchers work together the most.

In the report, NIFU writes that the growing importance of China and South Korea to Norwegian research cooperation is mainly due to the fact that the two countries have experienced rapid growth as research nations on the world stage.

If you look at the big picture, the Nordic countries and other European countries are still the most important cooperation partners for researchers in Norway.