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Abstract Environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) is one of the key theories of economic and environmentally sustainable development. Has the change in geopolitics in recent years affected the international collaboration in the study of the EKC? Based on the publications on the EKC included in the Web of Science, a case study of recent changes in China–US collaboration on the EKC is conducted to explore the impact of geopolitical changes on international collaborative research on sustainable development. The results show that (1) The EKC is a global study, and countries around the world have made more efforts, among which China, the United States, Turkey, Malaysia, England and other countries have made the most contributions in the global literature database and are the countries with the most development potential in this field. (2) International collaboration between China and the United States in this field has gradually increased, and scientific research collaboration between the two countries has increased under the influence of geopolitical conflicts, and collaboration has shown the characteristics of lasting stability. (3) China and the United States exhibit divergent international collaboration patterns, with Pakistan being China's foremost partner in this domain, while China serves as the US’ primary collaborator. Furthermore, China demonstrates a significantly higher volume of independently published works compared with the United States, highlighting the strengthening of China's scientific research capabilities. The number of countries collaborating internationally with China shows a different upward trend than in the United States across the three data sets set in this paper. (4) In the field of EKC hot research, China and the United States have maintained good international partnerships with other countries, and are the preferred countries for scientific research collaboration in other countries in the world. It can be seen from this that international scientific research collaboration for sustainable development represented by the EKC has shown relative stability, and geopolitical changes have not had a significant impact on international collaborative research for sustainable development.
Wang et al. (Tue,) studied this question.