U.S.-CHINA ACADEMIC DEPENDENCY
Abstract: This study aimed to examine the extent and evolving nature of China’s academic dependency on the United States using the field of computer science as the empirical setting. This analysis is situated within Alatas’s framework of intellectual imperialism and academic dependency. The empirical analysis employed scientometric methods using Scopus data from 2016 to 2024, and assessed four dimensions of dependency: reliance on U.S. research ideas (international knowledge spillovers), dependence on U.S. academic employment (high-skilled human capital flows), dependence on U.S. investment in education (comparative R&D financing architecture), and dependence on U.S. media of ideas (economic geography of scholarly publishing). The results show that China’s dependence on U.S. research ideas has decreased, with Chinese scholars citing domestic research at increasing rates and showing declining reliance on U.S. publications. The analysis also finds rising return migration of Chinese scientists from the United States, a pattern consistent with a redistribution of high-skilled human capital that strengthens China’s national innovation system. Furthermore, evidence suggests that Chinese academic funding is overwhelmingly domestically sourced. Yet persistent structural dependencies remain, particularly in publishing, as Chinese scholars continue to rely heavily on Western, especially U.S. and European, journals for global recognition. Overall, the findings indicate that although China is moving toward greater academic self-sufficiency in this field, it remains highly dependent on Western infrastructures for intellectual recognition. This suggests that the academic relationship reflects partial rebalancing rather than complete decoupling, confirming the leading role of the U.S. in the global academic community. The findings contribute to the literature on technological decoupling, international knowledge spillovers, and the comparative political economy of national innovation systems.
Keywords: National innovation systems, Academic dependency, United States-China, International knowledge spillovers, Decoupling