WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S.-China university partnerships over the past decade have enabled hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding to lend a hand Beijing develop critical technologies that could be used for military purposes, a novel report from congressional Republicans says.
According to the report, U.S. taxpayer dollars have contributed to China’s technological advancement and military modernization by allowing American researchers to collaborate with their Chinese counterparts in areas such as hypersonic weapons, artificial intelligence, nuclear technology and semiconductor technology.
The report, released Monday by Republicans on the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party and the House Education and Workforce Committee, raises concerns about the national security risks of scientific collaborations that were once celebrated and calls for stronger safeguards and tougher enforcement.
The committees spent a year examining the role of higher education in the economic rivalry with China, particularly in the technology sector. While American universities do not participate in secret research projects, their work – often among the best in the world – could be translated into military capabilities.
The U.S. House of Representatives passed about two dozen China-related bills this month with the clear goal of competing with Beijing in the technology field. The bills, which still need to be approved by the Senate, aim to ban Chinese-made drones, restrict China-linked biotech companies from the U.S. market and stop China’s remote access to advanced U.S. computer chips.
Other measures include curbing Beijing’s influence on U.S. colleges and reviving a Trump-era program to stop China’s espionage and intellectual property theft at American universities and research institutes, even as such efforts raise concerns about racial discrimination and call into question the ability to maintain exchange programs that foster tolerance between the two countries.
Collaboration between U.S.-based scientists and China has also declined due to the Trump administration’s anti-espionage program, which ended in 2022, researchers say.
Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell said at a Council on Foreign Relations forum earlier this year that he would like to see more Chinese students studying humanities and social sciences in American schools, but “not particle physics.”
Abigail Coplin, assistant professor of sociology and science, technology and society at Vassar College, expressed concern about potential damage to academic exchange and scholarly engagement, which she said promote understanding and lend a hand stabilize relationships.
“It is clear that American federal resources should not be used to strengthen China’s military capabilities, but there also needs to be more conversation about what is not a national security issue and the negative consequences of over-security,” Coplin said. “The decline in people-to-people contact is currently contributing to the rapidly deteriorating U.S.-China relationship.”
Monday’s report identified about 8,800 publications involving U.S. researchers funded by the Defense Department or U.S. intelligence agencies working with Chinese researchers – many of them linked to China’s defense research and industry. Such research “provides backdoor access to the very foreign adversary nation against whose aggression these capabilities are designed to protect,” the report said.
The House of Representatives investigation also pointed to problematic joint institutes between American and Chinese universities. Behind these institutes, according to the report, lies “a sophisticated system for transferring important American technologies and expertise” to China.
Through these institutes, American researchers and scientists, including those conducting government-funded research, traveled to China to work with Chinese academics, advise them and train Chinese students, the report said.
“This will create a direct route to transfer the benefits of their research expertise to China,” the report says.
The Georgia Institute of Technology, which is named in the report because of its joint Georgia Tech Shenzhen Institute, defended its work in China, saying its focus is on educating students rather than research, and said the report’s claims were “unfounded.”
“No research was conducted at GTSI, no technology transfer was facilitated, and no federal funds were provided to China,” the university said in a statement.
However, Georgia Tech announced on Sept. 6 that it would end its participation in the joint institute with Tianjin University and the government of the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen. Georgia Tech said the partnership was “no longer tenable” after the U.S. Department of Commerce accused Tianjin University of stealing trade secrets in 2020.
The congressional report also mentioned the Tsinghua-Berkeley Shenzhen Institute, which the University of California, Berkeley, and China’s Tsinghua University opened in the city of Shenzhen in 2015 to focus on “strategic emerging industries,” according to the institute’s website.
Berkeley researchers “engage exclusively in research whose results are always openly disseminated throughout the world,” and the school is “not aware of any research conducted by Berkeley faculty at TBSI for any other purpose,” Katherine Yelick, the university’s vice chancellor for research, said in a statement.
Berkeley also terminates its partnership on the grounds that it has no control over the research activities that are carried out at the joint institute exclusively by non-Berkeley employees.
The US university decided to begin the process of relinquishing all ownership rights at the Shenzhen school after “careful consideration that began several months ago,” Yelick said.
She said Berkeley “takes research security concerns very seriously – including those raised by Congress.”
The University of Pittsburgh, which is named in the report for its collaboration with Sichuan University, said it could not comment because Pennsylvania University “was not consulted throughout the investigation and did not cooperate with the House select committee.”
