Summary
An analysis of Chinese companies from 2010–22 found that firms placed on the US Entity List produced more patents citing scientific papers and published more research than comparable firms. The pattern suggests that technology restrictions changed how affected companies sought knowledge for innovation.
Chinese companies placed on the US government’s Entity List increased their engagement with scientific research, according to an analysis covering 2010–22. Compared with similar Chinese firms that were not listed, the affected companies produced more patents citing scientific publications and published more research papers.
The findings, reported in an analysis published in Science, indicate that restrictions on access to US-origin technologies were associated with a stronger shift towards scientific knowledge as a source of innovation. The analysis also highlights a policy trade-off: export controls intended to limit technological capabilities can encourage affected firms to deepen their investment in research.
A measured shift toward scientific knowledge
The Entity List restricts listed organisations from licensing certain materials and participating in joint research and development projects. The US government uses the list for national-security purposes, and large Chinese companies began to be added from 2018 as tensions between the two countries increased.
The researchers measured companies’ connection to science in two main ways. They examined how often a company’s patents cited scientific papers, and how many scientific articles the company published. A patent citation is a reference showing that an invention drew on, or was informed by, published research.
Chinese companies as a whole became more connected to scientific knowledge during the period studied. Patents granted in China that cited at least one scientific paper increased from 5,225 in 2010 to 94,441 in 2022, an increase of more than 18-fold. Patents granted to Chinese firms by the US Patent and Trademark Office rose from 452 to 6,071, an increase of more than 13-fold. US inventors and companies nevertheless remained the world leaders in the use of scientific knowledge in patents.
The difference was larger among companies that were placed on the Entity List. In the analysis, these firms produced 72.3% more patents citing at least one scientific publication than comparable firms that were not sanctioned. They also published 33.3% more papers indexed by the China National Knowledge Infrastructure, China’s largest academic database, and 85.2% more papers indexed in Web of Science.
How the companies were compared
The researchers combined data from the China National Intellectual Property Administration, Web of Science and the China Stock Market and Accounting Research Database. They identified Chinese companies added to the Entity List between 2010 and 2022, then compared them with non-listed companies sharing similar characteristics, including industry, ownership and location.
This matched comparison was designed to distinguish the change among listed firms from the broader rise in Chinese scientific and technological activity. It shows that companies affected by the restrictions pursued a more intensive science-and-technology approach than comparable firms during the same period.
In practical terms, scientific papers offered affected companies a route to research knowledge that was separate from restricted proprietary technologies and formal collaborations. Publishing more papers can also increase a firm’s direct participation in the scientific community, while citing more papers in patents indicates a closer connection between published research and technical inventions.
What the findings mean for technology controls
The results suggest that export controls can alter the way companies build technological capabilities, rather than simply reducing access to particular foreign products or partnerships. Firms facing restrictions may respond by drawing more heavily on published research and strengthening their own scientific activity.
The study is a comparison of companies over time, not a controlled experiment. Although the firms were matched on several important characteristics, other changes affecting listed companies during 2010–22 may also have contributed to their increased publication and patent activity. The reported evidence therefore supports a strong association between Entity List placement and greater engagement with science, while leaving the separate contribution of the restrictions less precisely isolated.