Danmarks retningslinjer for internationalt forskningssamarbejde: En balancegang mellem politisk pragmatik og risikostyring

The Danish guidelines for international research collaboration result from the rapid securitization of China’s role in global knowledge production and innovation. This article tracks how Danish research collaboration with China has changed from peaceable, to China being perceived as a threat that implied Danish research institutions were both targets of espionage and key players in Danish foreign and security policy, to that threat being one that must be weighed against the benefits of economic relations. We argue that the Danish guidelines for international research collaboration are marked by “strategic ambiguity”. Our review of annual risk assessments by the Danish intelligence services and Danish foreign policy strategy documents on China shows that ambiguity is a political – strategic – compromise. On the one hand, ambiguity is steered by long-term political, and more recently economic, interests in maintaining good relations with China and Chinese research environments. On the other hand, ambiguity arises in a novel context with Danish universities embedded in a new institutional field marked by the integration of export, security and foreign concerns in national research policy. From an organizational perspective, ambiguity is problematic. It creates an interpretative space where individual researchers are endowed with ultimate responsibility for implementing Danish guidelines.