China is, by all means, a priority country for Norway in both international trade and research. This is reflected in the fact that China is Norway’s second-largest trading partner outside Europe after the United States and, as of 2022, has become Norway’s fourth-largest scientific collaboration partner worldwide, measured by co-authored publications.
Nevertheless, research security has gained noticeable traction over the past few years, driven by geopolitical changes and international policy diffusion, considerably shaping the framework of the Sino-Norwegian scientific partnerships. Successive governments have largely adopted approaches of bureaucratic oversight, encouraging awareness and knowledge-building at the institutional level. But harder measures of control, such as toughening export laws and the establishment of the Directorate for Export Control and Sanctions within the Norwegian National Security Department (NSM), indicate a growing perception of risk and the influence of security and intelligence agencies on science policy.
This research is based on extensive quantitative and qualitative data from databases of the Research Council of Norway (RCN), the Directorate of Higher Education and Skills (DHES), and the parliament (Stortinget), laws and regulations, white papers and government reports, web publications of institutions in the broader academic sector, scientific articles, and media reports. Requests by the authors to universities to share data under FOIA went unanswered. Over 220 documents and databases were analyzed between August 2025 and January 2026. Our risk classification draws on the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s (ASPI) Defense University Tracker.
Main findings
Norway signed a high-level strategic partnership with China after 2016, resulting in a significant increase in research collaboration and exchange, especially between 2019 and 2022. The annual research volume of collaborative projects funded by the Research Council of Norway increased from NOK 1.5 million (€137,000) in 2006 to NOK 94.1 million (€8.9 million) in 2025.
Sixteen Norwegian Higher Education Institutions (HEIs), including comprehensive universities, universities of applied sciences, and university colleges, have been active in collaborations with Chinese institutions, several of which are currently classified as very high-risk or high-risk institutions in the ASPI ranking. Some collaborations involve critical fields, such as information and communication technology, data science, and material science. Four projects between 2012 and 2016 in petroleum, marine technology, transport infrastructure, and computer science involved Chinese institutions known as the “Seven Sons of National Defense.”
Domestic discourses and, by extension, academic relationships with China have been shaped by external developments, prompting significant change in the scope and nature of collaboration. Measures in research security have escalated over the past two years, signaling the expanding influence of risk narratives and intelligence and security actors in Norwegian science policy, while stakeholders in the educational sector are, in some cases, resisting and adapting the narrative.
Strategic collaboration
China has been an important collaborator in research and education for several decades. The Norwegian Government signed two Memoranda of Understanding in 2008, laying the groundwork for closer long-term cooperation. This partnership was further strengthened in 2016, when China, together with five other countries, four of which are BRICS members, was designated a priority partner under the Panorama Strategy (2016-2021), Norway’s initiative to promote long-term collaboration in research and higher education beyond Europe. This designation elevated the relationship to a strategic level. In the following two years, a bilateral Action Plan and an agreement on the Mutual Recognition of Diplomas, Certificates and Degrees in Higher Education were signed, formalizing further the partnership.
Academic collaboration and exchange are regarded as goals in themselves and as levers to support other, broader objectives in foreign trade and industrial policy. China’s inclusion in the Panorama Strategy was not merely an objective assessment of countries gaining prominence in global knowledge production; it was also tied to Norway’s efforts to restore official relations after they had been suspended following the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Liu Xiaobo. During the first Panorama cycle, nine priority areas were identified, mostly in the fields of environment, health, polar and maritime research, material sciences, and information and communication technologies. The strategy was underpinned with additional resources, reportedly over NOK 32 million (€2.9 million), from the Ministry of Education and Research (MoER) and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA). This fosters academic collaboration in various forms, including research projects, student exchanges and joint study programs, through various funding mechanisms.
Despite strong support at the highest levels, the partnership has been shaped by the growing international momentum of research security and the influence of domestic securitization actors. While reconfirming the Panorama Strategy (2021-2027), early calls for greater “vigilance” and “preventive security work” emerged. While the overall purpose of bilateral collaboration remained unchanged, an emphasis was placed on addressing global challenges and achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The revised Action Plan on Science and Technology Cooperation of 2024 now formally excludes material sciences, technology, and information and communication technologies from jointly financed collaboration, including joint research projects, technological development, the establishment of research labs and research centers, and multilateral research and innovation activities. However, despite the exclusion from the action plan, collaborations in these fields still received funding, as both the RCN and DHES project databases show.
Academic collaboration in numbers
While academic cooperation and exchange steadily expanded in the early 2000s, the launch of high-level strategic cooperation in 2016 further deepened these exchanges and collaborative efforts.
Between 2004 and 2025, the RCN funded 201 bilateral and multilateral research and other projects with a total volume of NOK 1.6 billion (€147 million). Some 111 were conducted by Norwegian HEIs, with an accumulated funding volume of NOK 723.5 million (€66.4 million) between 2006 and 2025, across the disciplines of Technology, Mathematics and Natural Sciences, Social Science, Medicine and Health, Agriculture and Fishery, and Humanities. The annual volume of grants increased from NOK 1.5 million (€138,000) in 2006 to NOK 94.1 million (€8.6 million) in 2025.
A steady increase occurred after 2016, with Sino-Norwegian collaborations gaining real traction in 2019, jumping from an average of 13 projects and an annual funding volume of NOK 17.4 million (€1.6 million) between 2009 and 2018 to 48 projects and NOK 76.8 million (€7 million) between 2019 and 2025. However, since 2022, when research collaboration peaked at 59 projects with a total grant volume of NOK 100 million (€9.2 million), cooperation has dropped to 41 projects and NOK 94 million (€8.6 million) in 2025. This means that fewer projects were funded, but with higher grants. Long-standing personal networks of researchers from both countries have been an important driver of Sino-Norwegian academic collaborations.
Research collaboration resulted in significant joint dissemination output. Sivertsen found in his 2022 study that by then China had become Norway’s fourth-largest scientific collaboration partner after the United States, Britain, and Sweden, mostly in the fields of health sciences, technology, environmental sciences, biomedicine, social sciences and humanities, and biology. With STEM subjects growing strongest, China became Norway’s strongest collaboration partner in technology.
Some 16 of 34 public HEIs have collaborated with China, both in RCW-funded projects and in co-authored articles. The Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) leads in quantity and scope, followed by the University of Oslo (UiO). Two current, two recent, and one past-funded project involved researchers and departments from the so-called “Seven Sons of National Defense”: Beihang University, Harbin Engineering University, Nanjing University of Science and Technology, and National University of Defense Technology. Some collaborations focus on student and staff exchanges and educational activities, for example, in supercomputing (2012-2016) and smart and sustainable transport services and future trends (2021-2026). Others conduct joint research in digitalizing offshore oil and gas production or sub-area autonomy and remote control technology with the goal to “establish a remote control centre for on-board support of autonomous ships.”
Furthermore, 34 other projects involved Chinese universities at very high and high risk. Three projects tackled critical areas of material sciences and engineering, data science, and information and communication technologies.
Six Norwegian HEIs are also members of the Nordic Center in Shanghai, a multilateral partnership between 22 universities from five Nordic countries and Fudan University and three additional associated Chinese universities. Founded in 1995, the multilateral collaboration funds small-scale bilateral projects and facilitates cross-national networking for individual researchers.
Evolving discourse: Between threat and benefits
Research security has risen to the forefront in academic and political circles, with policy and structural changes introduced at both national and institutional levels. Several incidents of academic collaboration, though not all connected to China, received broader media coverage. These include discussions around Norway’s only Confucius Institute leading up to its closure in 2021, a court sentence of a Norwegian scholar for breaking international sanctions regulations against Iran, an espionage case related to Russia at the Arctic University in Tromsø, and a research collaboration between NTNU and the Chinese National University of Defense Technology.
The government, MoFA, the NSM, the Norwegian Police Security Service (PST), the Norwegian Intelligence Service, and societal organizations, such as the Rafto Foundation, which promotes human rights issues, emerge as key actors, driving the risk-oriented discourse in Norway. Since 2016, NSM and PST have identified China, alongside Russia and Iran, as a source of threat in their annual assessments, a designation that also encompasses knowledge exchange and transfer. The Progress Party (Fremskrittspartiet), though playing a marginal role in Norwegian politics, issued six parliamentary questions between 2021 and 2026 demanding the suspension of all academic collaborations with countries with which Norway does not have security collaboration, including China.
In the broader education sector, multiple stakeholders variously “resist, adapt to, or accept” the security-or-threat discourse. The MoER and DHES are in a structurally constrained position, as they are tasked with supporting individual and institutional risk management while acting as fervent advocates for continued collaboration with China. DHES and scholars, especially those with specific expertise on China, have been emphasizing the multiple benefits of continued collaboration for research and society at large. Several scholars have sought to recalibrate the discourse through evidence-based research and media engagement, warning of overreach and potential discrimination, while pointing to constraints on academic freedom; only a few call for more far-reaching measures.
Research security: Measures of bureaucratic oversight
Heightened attention, closely tied to geopolitical shifts and the international diffusion of policy and discourse, has placed Norwegian governments and higher education institutions under mounting pressure and growing scrutiny. Sweeping measures and policy changes have been introduced, especially since 2023.
For several years, the Norwegian government opted for a largely decentralized mode of bureaucratic oversight. The “state’s soft power,” led by MoES and the DHES, sought to strengthen risk management within the education and research sector. Key measures included establishing an annual roundtable in 2018 for executive leaders of research institutes and HEIs, as well as publishing the “Guidelines and Tools for Responsible International Science Collaboration” in 2023. Risk management lies within the responsibility of the individual researcher and the institution.
However, the installation of the Directorate for Export Control and Sanctions within the NSM, the toughening of export control regulations, and reported additional requirements for “research security assessment and management as a prerequisite for funding” by the RCN indicate a growing influence of risk perception and security and intelligence agencies in science policy and the government’s readiness to act upon demands from these actors.
In response to the above developments, all major universities have implemented competence- and awareness-building measures and various risk management strategies. These included ramping up export control expertise, introducing background checks, collaborating with intelligence services, and revising hiring policies and institutional collaborations, such as with the Confucius Institute and the Chinese Scholarship Council.
Conclusion and recommendations
The elevation of academic cooperation with China in 2016, accompanied by the scaling up of existing funds and the introduction of additional funding schemes, resulted in measurable growth in bilateral cooperation, as evidenced by funded projects, co-authored publications, and statistics on incoming and outgoing students. Sixteen Norwegian HEIs were identified as having partnered with Chinese institutions, several of which are currently classified as very high-risk or high-risk in the ASPI ranking. However, many of these collaborations either focus on student exchange and educational activities or on low-risk topics, such as smart transportation. That said, dual-use risk might not be entirely excluded, for example, in research on sub-area autonomy and remote control technology.
Risk narratives and securitizing actors, at both the international and national levels, as well as mounting domestic media attention, have shaped Sino-Norwegian academic collaboration since 2018, and it has grown very strong in the past three years. While strategic collaboration initially covered a broad range of areas, critical areas and technologies are not listed in the recent bilateral action plan, and an emphasis was placed on jointly achieving SDGs. Moreover, national guidelines and exchange platforms were established, and organizations introduced awareness-building measures to improve researchers’ preparedness.
But to what extent revisions to the bilateral action plan go beyond a rhetorical alignment with “responsible international collaboration” remains to be seen. For now, it remains unclear how the increased attention to potential security risks of academic cooperation with China will affect funding policies and individual decisions about collaborations in the long run, and thus the sustainability and scope of Sino-Norwegian collaborations.
As academic collaborations often emerge from personal relationships grounded in trust and vulnerable to external shocks, the government should carefully evaluate the unintended consequences of aligning the nature and scope of academic collaboration with political pressures from both the outside and the inside.
Beyond the governmental approach, Norwegian HEIs should devise localized measures and processes through which risk awareness will be built, risk levels monitored, and subsequent decisions on mitigation measures adopted. At the same time, these measures need to carefully balance potential risks against the benefits of cooperation (a net benefit approach) and focus on risk mitigation practices to achieve net-beneficial cooperation.
To avoid disincentivizing newcomers in Sino-Norwegian collaborations, institutions are advised to devise measures that not only accommodate top-level requests to improve research security risk evaluation and management but also foster China-related competencies more broadly, as risk evaluation needs to be adequately contextualized. Finally, experienced China collaborators should actively engage in experience sharing and groom newcomers. If not, Norway will risk disengagement and loss of access to critical information in China.
Explore more data on Norway-China academic engagements here.
