Hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S.-funded research has benefited Chinese entities, a report from the House Committee on Education and the Workforce reveals.
“[D]ue to a lack of legal guardrails around federally funded research, hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. federal research funding over the last decade have contributed to the [People’s Republic of China’s] strategic goals by helping the PRC achieve advancements in dual use, critical, and emerging technologies like hypersonic weapons, artificial intelligence, fourth generation nuclear weapons technology, and semiconductor technology,” the report’s executive summary reads.
Nearly 9,000 publications supported by the Department of Defense were coauthored by people affiliated with the PRC. A number of other publications with ties to the PRC were funded by the Intelligence Community.
More than 2,000 of the papers included PRC coauthors who were “directly affiliated with the PRC’s defense research and industrial base,” the report notes, adding that some researchers helped China “achieve advancements in fourth generation nuclear weapons technology, artificial intelligence, advanced lasers, graphene semiconductors, and robotics.”
The report also highlights collaborations between the CCP and U.S. universities through three joint “U.S.-PRC research institutes.” These institutes “facilitate the transfer of expertise, applied research, and technologies related to dual-use, critical, and emerging technologies to the PRC,” the committee explains.
“Through these institutes, participating American academics, many of whom conduct U.S. federally funded research, travel to the PRC to collaborate on research, advise PRC scholars, teach and train PRC graduate students, and collaborate with PRC companies on their areas of expertise—frequently, critical and emerging technologies with national security implications,” the report notes.
Schools involved in “academic cooperation” with the PRC, the committee adds, include the University of California, Berkeley and Georgia Tech. Both universities have since stated they will take steps to end their partnerships with Chinese entities.
Committee Chairwoman Virginia Foxx (R-NC) said in a statement, “For years, the Committee on Education and the Workforce has pushed for greater transparency regarding foreign investment in American universities, and this investigation just further proved why it’s necessary.”
“Georgia Tech did the right thing for US national security by shutting down its PRC-based joint institute, and UC Berkeley and other universities should follow suit,” Foxx added. “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.”
The DETERRENT Act, or the Defending Education Transparency and Ending Rogue Regimes Engaging in Nefarious Transactions Act, aims to expand “oversight and disclosure requirements related to foreign sources and institutions of higher education (IHEs).”
House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party Chairman John Moolenaar (R-MI) called the report’s findings “alarming,” explaining that the CCP is “driving its military advancements through US taxpayer-funded research and through joint US-PRC institutes in China.”
American Faith reported that U.S.-funded research has also led to the development of more than 1,000 patents for Chinese entities.
Several of the patents were granted through funding from the Pentagon, the Department of Energy, the Department of Health and Human Services, and NASA.
