Abstract:Report to the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China takes high-quality development as the overarching task of building a modern socialist country in all respects, and puts forward the requirements of promoting high standard opening up, deeply involving in global industrial division of labor and cooperation, and expanding science and technology exchanges and cooperation with other countries. Transnational cooperation between industry, university and research institutes is of great significance for China to promote high standard opening up, deepen foreign economic and trade relations and promote high-quality development. This study proposes a model illustrating four types of driving force for transnational industry-university-research cooperation, including political force, market force, research force and social force. China-US Clean Energy Research Center is studied as case to further elaborate and verify the model. It is found that enough positive driving force is critical for transnational industry-university-research cooperation. According to analysis result, several suggestions are put forwarded, such as tackling with global challenges, promoting institutional openness, strengthening asymmetric advantages.