Research cooperation with Chinese targeted.

The Chairs of the House China and Education Committees raised concerns that decades of federally funded research has benefited the defense and security establishments of the PRC.  

Fresh from their victory shaming Georgia Tech into severing a four decade history of cooperation in China [12746], China Committee Chair John Moolenaar (R-MI) and Education and Workforce Chair Virginia Foxx (R-NC) highlighted US-Chinese joint education institutes like UC Berkeley’s partnership with Tsinghua University [TBSI]. and the University of Pittsburgh's partnership with Sichuan University, contending that they "serve as conduits for transferring critical U.S. technologies and expertise to China, including to entities linked to China’s defense machine and the security apparatus it uses to facilitate human rights abuses."

[No mention was made of the Michigan and North Carolina institutions with similar collaborations, including Duke Kushan University in Suzhou, or the University of Michigan's Shanghai Jiao Tong University Joint Institute (UM-SJTU JI).]

"These institutes pair prestigious U.S. universities with PRC counterparts under the guise of academic cooperation, but in practice, they conceal a sophisticated system for transferring critical U.S. technologies and expertise to the PRC, including to blacklisted entities linked to China’s defense and security apparatus," the report asserts.

"We also must ban research collaboration with blacklisted entities, enact stricter guardrails on emerging technology research, and hold American universities accountable through passing the Deterrent Act,” said Mr. Moolenaar. 

The report notes that "UC Berkeley informed the Committees that it “has started the process of relinquishing all ownership” in TBSI, and is “in the early stages of unwinding the joint legal entity.”

The report's findings:

• identified 8,800+ publications supported by DOD funding published with coauthors affiliated with PRC institutions, and an additional 185 such publications supported by IC funding.
• The "vast majority" of these DOD-funded publications constitute advanced research related to dual-use, critical, and emerging technologies.
• These papers covered topics including hypersonics, directed energy, nuclear and high-energy physics, and artificial intelligence and autonomy.
•  More than 2,000 papers DOD-funded papers included PRC coauthors who were directly affiliated with the PRC’s defense research and industrial base.

Fundamental vs Applied 

"Universities under report—and the government has failed to enforce reporting mandates on—foreign funding from the PRC," the authors note.  "These undisclosed foreign gifts—likely hundreds of millions, if not billions in total—gives PRC entities troubling influence without transparency and contribute to building the research relationships that pose risks to U.S. national security."

In Defense of Cooperation

While the report describes an area of profound national security concern, some fear the shrill tone of the China hawks risks throwing out the baby with the bathwater.   Cutting off discourse with half the world's researchers in these critical fields may have implications for our future readiness.

Denis Simon, a professor of International Business who resigned from UNC Chapel Hill last year after being sanctioned for contact with Chinese representatives without University permission, describes the challenge presented academics:

"While China's rise may be viewed as a so-called "existential threat" to the US by many in the world of the Beltway, the fact is that China's enhanced capabilities in science, technology and education represent an exciting opportunity for real mutual benefit from enhanced interactions and cooperation.

"The simple fact is that there is no major global challenge out there—climate change, clean energy, global pandemics, cancer, food security, etc.—whose meaningful solution does not depend on close US-China collaboration."

Click HERE to read the report