WASHINGTON — Partnerships between the U.S. and China at universities over the past decade have allowed hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding to aid Beijing in developing critical technology that could be used for military purposes, congressional Republicans asserted in a new report.
The report said U.S. tax dollars have contributed to China’s technological advancement and military modernization when American researchers worked with their Chinese peers 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, raised concerns over the national security risks of scientific collaborations that were once celebrated. It urged stronger safeguards and more robust enforcement.
The committees conducted a yearlong investigation into higher education’s role in the economic rivalry with China, especially when it comes to technology. While American universities don’t engage in secret research projects, their work — often among the best in the world — has the potential to be turned into military capabilities.
The U.S. House of Representatives this month approved about two dozen China-related bills, with a clear goal to compete with Beijing in the tech field. The bills, which still need to be approved by the Senate, seek to ban Chinese-made drones, restrict China-linked biotech companies in the U.S. market, and cut off remote Chinese access to advanced U.S. computer chips.
Other measures include those to curb Beijing’s influence on U.S. college campuses and to revive a Trump-era program meant to root out China’s spying and theft of intellectual property at American universities and research institutes. That’s despite such efforts raising concerns about racial profiling and the ability to keep up exchange programs that boost tolerance between the two countries.
Collaboration among U.S.-based scholars and China also declined as a result of the Trump administration’s anti-spying program, which ended in 2022, researchers say.
Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell said at a forum by the Council on Foreign Relations earlier this year that he would welcome more Chinese students studying humanities and social sciences but “not particle physics” in American schools.
Abigail Coplin, an assistant professor of sociology and science, technology and society at Vassar College, expressed concerns about the potential harm to academic exchange and scientific engagement, which she said promote understanding and help stabilize relations.
“Clearly American federal funding should not be used to advance China’s military capabilities, but there also needs to be more conversation about what is not an issue of national security and the negative ramifications of over-securitization,” Coplin said. “Decreased person-to-person engagement is contributing to the rapidly fraying U.S.-China relationship at the moment.”
Monday’s report identified about 8,800 publications that involved U.S. researchers who received funding from the Department of Defense or the U.S. intelligence community working with Chinese researchers — many of whom were affiliated with China’s defense research and industrial base. Such research is “providing back-door access to the very foreign adversary nation whose aggression these capabilities are necessary to protect against,” the report said.
The House investigation also flagged what it described as problematic joint institutes between U.S. and Chinese universities, which the report said “conceal a sophisticated system for transferring critical U.S. technologies and expertise” to China.
Through those institutes, American researchers and scientists, including those who conduct federally funded research, have traveled to China to work with and advise Chinese scholars and train Chinese students, the report said.
“This creates a direct pipeline for the transfer of the benefit of their research expertise” to China, the report said.
The Georgia Institute of Technology, which is named in the report for its joint Georgia Tech Shenzhen Institute, defended its work in China, saying it was focused on educating students, not research, and that the report’s claims are “unsubstantiated.”
“There was no research conducted at GTSI, no facilitation of technology transfer, and no federal funding provided to China,” the university said in a statement.
However, Georgia Tech announced Sept. 6 that it would discontinue its participation in the joint institute with Tianjin University and the government of Shenzhen, a city in southern China. Georgia Tech said the partnership was “no longer tenable” after the U.S. Commerce Department accused Tianjin University in 2020 of theft of trade secrets.
The congressional report also identified Tsinghua-Berkeley Shenzhen Institute, which the University of California, Berkeley, and China’s Tsinghua University opened in 2015 in the city of Shenzhen to focus on “strategic emerging industries,” according to the institute’s website.
Berkeley’s researchers “engage only in research whose results are always openly disseminated around the world” and the school was “not aware of any research by Berkeley faculty at TBSI conducted for any other purpose,” Katherine Yelick, the university’s vice chancellor for research, said in a statement.
Berkeley also is unwinding its partnership, saying it has no oversight of research activities conducted only by non-Berkeley employees at the joint institute.
The U.S. university has decided “to start the process of relinquishing all ownership” in the Shenzhen school “after careful consideration, which began several months ago,” Yelick said.
She said Berkeley “takes concerns about research security very seriously — including those concerns voiced by Congress.”
The University of Pittsburgh, which is named in the report for its cooperation with Sichuan University, said it could not comment because the Pennsylvania university “was not consulted and did not work with the House Select Committee throughout the investigation.”
