Since 1979, the US and China have had an agreement on science and technology cooperation. In a letter to US president Joe Biden as well as National Security Council members, Stanford University academics have said that failure to renew the agreement could “directly and negatively impact our own research”.

The agreement will expire on August 27 without administrative action.

Cutting off ties with China would also be detrimental for colleagues as well as the educational mission of US universities, the scientists added.

Professors Steven Kivelson and Peter F. Michelson have also called on faculty members and scholars at US institutions of higher learning to co-sign the letter.

In the letter, the scientists note that the cooperation agreement has to date been of “enormous benefit” to the US while acknowledging that legitimate national security concerns require the country to “limit access to certain research and information” at times.

“However, as outlined in National Security Decision Directive 189, such information should be classified,” they said.

“Fundamental research at US institutions of higher learning, the results of which are intended to be openly published, should not be classified in accord with NSDD 189.”

Deborah Seligsohn at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington DC has also stated that the US-China S&T agreement “should not be allowed to lapse”.

“Every effort should be made to maintain such exchanges”

Examples of impact of the agreement includes a birth defects study that identified the efficacy of folic acid to prevent stillbirths or lifelong birth defects, a US-China cooperation project on influenza that has improved flu vaccine development, projects on reducing local air pollution in China with less pollution blowing across the Pacific, as well as geology, paleontology and biology, Seligsohn detailed.

Social scientists have collaborated to understand areas from education to HIV/AIDS prevention, she added, and the US will “lose access to data and to knowledgeable partners without this collaboration”.

In the latest letter, the scientists point to benefits of “robust and open” research collaboration and exchanges of information and people between the two countries, stating that “every effort should be made to maintain such exchanges”.

“The Protocol has provided a valuable framework for dialogue and development of specific agreements regarding scientific and technological cooperation and exchanges between the United States and China including people-to-people connections and educational exchanges that have benefited the United States.

“The United States should renew the Protocol, not because China wants to, but rather because it is in the best interests of the United States,” the letter concludes.