(Yicai) Dec. 17 -- China and the United States have inked a protocol to amend their US-China Science and Technology Agreement and extend it for an additional five years.

The two countries penned the protocol on Dec. 13, agreeing to extend the STA effective Aug. 27 this year, China's Ministry of Science and Technology announced on the same day.

First signed in 1979, the STA was usually renewed every five years, but its last five-year update was in August 2018 because opinions within the US about the pact have been divided since last year. Due to this, China and the US inked one six-month extension in August last year and another in February.

The renewed agreement reflects the efforts of the Biden administration in pursuing a relatively balanced policy approach towards China, said Xiao He, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

The scope of the STA has been adjusted and narrowed, focusing on foundational scientific cooperation between the two governments while alleviating concerns within the US about potential threats to national security posed by the agreement, Xiao noted. The pact also keeps general economic ties with China in non-sensitive areas, ensuring a favorable situation for the US, Xiao pointed out.

In June last year, 10 Republican members of the House of Representatives wrote to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken to scrap the STA, citing concerns over its impact on innovation development and security issues. However, US academic and business professionals continued to support maintaining cooperative ties with China.

The Biden administration's decision to announce the renewal now may reflect a strategy to prioritize clearly defining its stance on policies and enhancing its reputation while securing credit for achievements already made rather than focusing on whether its diplomatic legacy can endure, Xiao told Yicai.

Around one-third of US research on telecommunications and computer science was made in collaboration with China between 2017 and 2021, while one-fifth of published environmental science research was done with Chinese scientists, according to global data analytics service provider Clarivate.

The quality of Chinese research is improving, with the share of Chinese papers among the world's top 1 percent most frequently cited works surging by 40 percent from 2012 to 2021, while that for US papers dropped by 18 percent.

China has established scientific and technological cooperation relationships with more than 160 countries and regions and signed 118 bilateral and multilateral governmental agreements on sci-tech cooperation, the science ministry announced in September.

Editor: Martin Kadiev