Washington (AP) -In a period of two years, the Pentagon financed hundreds of projects that were carried out in cooperation with universities in China and institute in connection with the defense industry of this country.
The report, which was published on Friday by House Republicans in the selection committee of the China Communist Party, argues that the projects have made China possible to exploit US research partnerships for military profits, while the two countries are locked up on a technology and weapon rivalry.
“American taxpayers should not be used to defend the nation – not to strengthen the most important strategic competitor,” wrote the Republicans in the report.
“The failure of American research before enemy exploitation in foreign foreigners will further undermine the US technological dominance and put our national defense skills in danger,” it said.
The Pentagon and did not immediately respond to an Associated Press request for comment.
The congress report said that some officials from the Ministry of Defense argued that research remains open as long as it is “neither controlled or classified”.
The report contains several recommendations to scale the cooperation between US research with China. It also supports recent laws proposed by the chairman of the committee, Rep. John Moolenaar, R-Michigan. The legislation would prohibit any funding from the Ministry of Defense of projects in cooperation with researchers associated with Chinese companies that the US government identifies as security risks.
The Chinese message called the report “unfounded” on Friday. “We are against it,” said the message.
In the past, Beijing has stated that science and technological cooperation between the two countries are advantageous for both sides and helps them to deal with global challenges.
Republicans say that joint research could have military applications
The 80-page report builds on the results of the committee last year that partnerships between US and Chinese universities in the past decade enabled hundreds of millions of dollars of federal financing to support Beijing in the development of critical technologies. In the middle of the pressure of the Republicans, several US universities have ended their common programs with Chinese schools in recent years.
The recent report focuses more closely on the Ministry of Defense and its billions of dollars of annual research financing.
The committee investigated 1,400 research work, which were published between June 2023 and June 2025 and the support of the Pentagon recognized and carried out in cooperation with Chinese partners. The publications were financed by around 700 defense grants worth more than 2.5 billion US dollars. Of the 1,400 publications, more than half of the organizations participated with China’s defense research and the industrial grain.
Dozens of these organizations were identified in lists of the US government due to potential security concerns, although the federal law does not prohibit research cooperation with them. The Ministry of Department’s money supported research in areas such as hyperschall technology, semiconductor, artificial intelligence, advanced materials and drive drive of the next generation.
According to the report, many projects have clear military applications.
In one case, a geophysicist at Carnegie Science, a research facility in Washington, worked in detail on Pentagon-supported research, while at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and at the Hefei Institute of Physical Sciences.
The scientist who carried out research on high-energy materials, nitrogen and high-pressure physics for the development of nuclear weapons are relevant for his work in China in order to advance the country’s national development goals, the report says. It described the case “A deeply disturbing example” for how Beijing financed US taxpayers in order to promote its gun development.
In an explanation, Carnegie Science said that she corresponds to all US laws. “The cited work was fundamental research, publicly available and completely not classified. This research focused on fundamental properties of matter in connection with planetary science,” said the institute.
Carnegie Science also denied the report that the work was financed by the Pentagon, and said that she came from the most significant research instrumentation program of the National Science Foundation.
In another project supported by Pentagon, the Arizona State University and University of Texas teamed up with researchers from Shanghai Jiao Tong University and Behang University in order to study the decision-making process with high operations in unsafe environments that have direct applications for electronic warfare and cyber defense. The money came from the office for naval research, the army research office and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
Shanghai University is under the supervision of a central Chinese agency commissioned to develop defense technology, and the Bei Hang University in the capital Beijing is connected to the folk exemption army and is known for its aerospace programs.
Demands the scaling of research collaborations back
The report is faced with the Ministry of Department of Department that does not expressly prohibit research partnerships with foreign institutions that appear in Blacklists of the US government.
There are more than a dozen recommendations, including a ban on working with Pentagon research work with companies that are known to US blacklists or “known as part of Chinese defense research and the industrial basis”.
Moolenaar’s legislation includes a similar provision and proposes a ban on the funding of the Ministry of Defense for US universities that have common institutes with Chinese universities.
An official of the Senior Education Department said the report “shows the susceptibility of nationwide financed research for foreign infiltration on the American campus”. As part of Minister of Education, Nicholas Kent said that the results reinforce the need for more transparency about the international relationships between US universities and a “full-von government approach to ensure the malignant influence of hostile foreign actors”.
House’s investigators said that they were not trying to end all academic and research collaborations with China, but those with connections to the Chinese military and its research and industrial basis.
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