Prof. Masaru YARIME, Associate Professor in the Division of Public Policy (PPOL); XIE Siqi, PhD student in the Individualized Interdisciplinary Program (IIP) (Innovation, Policy and Entrepreneurship); and ZENG Xuan, PhD student in PPOL, received the Best Poster Award at the International Conference on the Science of Science and Innovation (ICSSI) 2026, held in Boulder, Colorado, from June 29 to July 1. The award-winning research, “Bless or Curse? Effects of U.S. Export Controls on China’s High-Tech Innovation Through the Lens of Entity-Listed Firms,” reveals that the U.S. controls paradoxically drive targeted Chinese firms to accelerate their domestic innovation despite restricted key commodities.

Addressing a key question arising from the U.S.-China trade friction, the study examines how  U.S. export controls affect the innovation performance of Chinese high-tech firms added to the Entity List. The research team treated Entity List inclusion as an external policy shock, comparing newly listed Chinese firms between 2018 and 2020 with comparable firms that were never listed. The research shows that Chinese high-tech companies added to the U.S. Entity List increased patent applications by about 34% after being sanctioned, with the effect rising to 56.3% four years later. These findings highlight particularly strong innovation responses among non-state-owned enterprises, listed firms, large firms, and information-sector firms, illustrating the complex and often unintended effects of technology sanctions.

This recognition at ICSSI—an interdisciplinary platform exploring global science and technology policy—underscores the significance of the research team’s contribution to understanding the relationship between export controls and innovation. By providing empirical evidence on how firms respond to technological restrictions, the research sheds new light on the consequences of technology sanctions and offers valuable insights for policymakers, scholars, and practitioners.