China and Europe networks in health: an empirical analysis on co-publications

Abstract

In recent years, the impressive growth of China after the opening to market economy is facing long-term sustainability risks. In particular, the necessity to couple economic growth with an increase in the population's well-being has started to be raised. As health is a pivotal sector in terms of impact on life quality of the population, to deepen the knowledge of the factors and the dynamics regulating enhancements in this field becomes particularly relevant. Progress in health directly derives from progresses made in scientific research. This paper analyses the evolution of international cooperation of Chinese institutions in health-related scientific fields, measured in terms of co-publications. Changes in China's position in the international scientific literature are traced, focusing then on the current structure of co-authorships with the first five EU countries in terms of GDP and highlighting differences in the weight, the structure and the degree of complexity of the relation networks.

Challenges on the European Union-China cooperation in higher education from ‘people-to-people dialogue’ perspective: The case of health-related joint projects

“…In fact, unaligned political research priorities and differing policy frameworks on an institutional, local, regional and national level often impede or complicate international cooperation. There is still room for improvement and a long way to go, but as Rubini and Pollio (2017, p. 15) concluded “(…) in the case of health, the mutual exchange of knowledge and competences might end in a win-win game, allowing all partners to improve their health systems and to ultimately increase the well-being of their populations”.…”

“…Despite the previous considerations based on existing literature, when digging into EU-China higher education and research cooperation through the literature, one finds a scarcity of documents in this domain, particularly in what concerns to health scientific cooperation, which is the focus of this paper. In parallel, and curiously, these areas of cooperation – higher education and research – are precisely those that seem to gather highest trust and mutual understandings to enhance knowledge, trust and continuity in EU-China cooperation, also in other sectors as the industry, government (Liu, 2017), and health sector (Rubini & Pollio, 2017). Our study aims thus to bridge this gap by navigating the dynamics of the EU-China higher education cooperation through multiple layers (Välimaa, 2007) of modern China history, paying special attention to the question: “Are there effective EU-China partnerships in higher education in general and, particularly, in health scientific joint research projects?”…”

Transnational Research Networks in Chinese Scientific Production. An Investigation on Health-Industry Related Sectors

“…On the contrary, researchers working in isolation are less productive, less informed and consequently less acknowledged [ 22 ]. Co-research ultimately contributes to the scientific progress, allowing to combine and integrate competences, to ignite cross-fertilization procedures and to favor the interchange of experiences [ 23 , 24 ].…”