International cooperation is an important aspect affecting a country's basic research capacity. From the perspective of international collaborative research, based on the data of highly cited papers funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) from 2012 to 2021, the bibliometric methods, social network analysis and empirical analysis are used to conduct research. It is found that the degree of dependence on international cooperation and its independent research and development capabilities of 22 ESI disciplines in China are significantly different.The dependent disciplines and catch-up disciplines with relatively weak basic research in China account for about 90.91%, and the stronger leading disciplines and leading disciplines account for about 9.09%. USA is China's most important international partner and plays an "intermediary" role in China's cooperation with other countries to a certain extent. International cooperation enhances the basic research capacity of catch-up and dependent disciplines. Finally, a number of policy recommendations are put forward to improve the basic research capabilities of the four discipline types and the layout of international cooperation.