Some Reflections to China's International Collaboration

This paper is to reflect the China's international collaboration in science during the period 1995-2015 and to discover the dynamics and the channel of international collaboration between China and the main scientific and technological powers. USA, Japan, Germany, UK, and France are chosen the international target countries to compare, the collaborative data of Big 6 are retrieved in Web of Science, and some descriptive statistical analyses are given. The data show that China's share of internationally co-authored papers is still considerably lower than that of the other main countries. The numbers of collaborative papers in five nations have grown much faster than the numbers of non-collaborative ones. In China collaborative papers grow only slightly faster than non-collaborative ones, especially over the latest years. China's international collaboration in science has obvious disciplinary preferences, focusing mainly on traditional fundamental disciplines. Overseas Chinese play an extremely important role in mainland China's international collaboration, providing an optimal channel to overcome linguistic and cultural barriers.