A Chinese professor at the University of Copenhagen (KU) conducted genetic research with the Chinese military without disclosing the connection, the university told Reuters, in the latest example of how China’s pursuit of military-civilian technology is tapping into Western academia in the strategically sensitive area of biotechnology.
The professor, Zhang Guojie (張國捷), is also employed by Shenzhen-based genomics giant BGI Group, which funds dozens of researchers at the university and has its European headquarters on its campus.
Zhang and a student he was supervising worked with a Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) laboratory on research exposing monkeys to extreme altitude to study their brains and develop new drugs to prevent brain damage — a priority the PLA has identified for Chinese troops operating on high-altitude borders.
Zhang copublished the paper with a PLA major general in January last year.
At the time, the study was published, the university was “not familiar with the fact that the paper also included authors from Chinese military research institutions,” KU biology department head Niels Kroer told Reuters in an e-mail.
Zhang confirmed that he did not inform the university of the link because KU did not require researchers to report coauthors on scientific papers, which the university confirmed.
BGI said the study with the PLA lab “was not carried out for military purposes” and brain research is a critical area for understanding human diseases.
The Chinese Academy of Sciences said the study had national defense and civilian benefits on the Tibetan plateau.
Concerns about China’s fusion of military and civilian technology, and about universities transferring sensitive technology to China that could help its military, have grown in the US in the past few years.
Washington last month agreed to work with the EU on the issue under a new joint technology and trade council.
A US Department of Defense report on China’s military power this month flagged concern over Beijing using biotechnology to enhance its soldiers’ performance.
The Danish incident shows how China’s pursuit of biotechnology with a military use has also become an issue for universities in Europe.
PLANNED CURBS
The European Commission says it is developing guidelines on “tackling foreign interference” at higher education institutions, and a report from the Leiden Asia Center, an independent group affiliated with Leiden University in the Netherlands, last year found that at least five countries in Europe had concerns about the risks of research collaboration with China. Some universities, including KU, have long had close science ties to China.
KU and two large Danish foundations who funded some of Zhang’s work said they discovered China’s military was involved only after one of the foundations saw it had been credited — incorrectly — with financing the monkey study.
The work was funded by the Chinese government and military, the paper said.
The discovery came as the Danish Security and Intelligence Service in May warned universities in the country of the national security risks of being unwittingly involved in foreign military research, citing “a number of espionage activities and other foreign interference” and a student who coauthored research into 5G technology with an engineer from a Chinese military university.
It declined to comment on specific cases.
The Chinese Academy of Sciences, where Zhang also has a genetics lab, said of the study that brain damage and death caused by high altitude on the Tibetan plateau had severely hindered “national defense construction.”
The Danish Ministry of Higher Education and Science declined to comment on the altitude study, but said that export control rules apply to some technology that can be used for civilian and military purposes.
The Danish Business Authority said that most types of gene technology are not on its export control list.
The ministry said that it had launched a broad review of the risks of international research cooperation, led by top university heads, to conclude at the start of next year.
KU expects that the review of “ethical and security policy limits” for collaboration would result in new rules for universities — and greater focus on the risks, university research and innovation deputy director Kim Brinckmann told Reuters in an e-mail.
“We are very proud to have Prof. Zhang ... as one of our very highly performing researchers,” he said.
The university did not respond to a question about how much funding it receives from BGI.
The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs said it had urged Danish institutions to “abandon ideological prejudice and end groundless accusations and smears,” and treat their research cooperation rationally “to accrue positive energy in the development of bilateral relations and practical cooperation.”
Zhang and Gao Yuqi (高鈺琪), the head of the PLA laboratory for high-altitude research, designed the study, which also lists BGI founders Wang Jian (汪建) and Yang Huanming (楊煥明) as coauthors.
BGI’s other joint research with Gao has involved soldiers in Tibet and Xinjiang, Reuters reported in January.
That report was cited by two US senators who in September called for BGI to be sanctioned by the US as a PLA-linked company.
Gao’s research has directly improved the ability of China’s rapid-advance plateau troops to carry out training and combat missions, the Chinese military has said in a official news service.
LONG-TERM EFFORT
The Chinese Academy of Military Medical Sciences in 2012 launched a four-year plan for troops to acclimatize and adapt to the low-oxygen Tibetan plateau.
The plan said that BGI was working with Gao’s lab to test soldiers arriving in Tibet and identify genes linked to altitude sickness, which does not affect Tibetans.
It said preventing altitude sickness helped to “manage border areas where ethnic minorities gather,” and had far-reaching economic and political significance.
BGI told Reuters that the research with the military university aimed to understand the health risk for all people traveling to and working at high altitude.
“The project using BGI’s technology studied the changes of the pathophysiology and genomics of the human body at very high altitudes,” a BGI spokesman said. “In China, many military institutions ... carry out both civilian and military research.”
Gao in 2018 wrote that high altitude disease “is the main reason for reduced combat effectiveness and health damage of soldiers at high altitudes and influences the results of war on the highland plateau.”
Drugs could be used in an emergency for the rapid deployment of soldiers, Gao added..
The PLA has over the past few months increased live fire drills in Tibet after border clashes with India.
KU has one of Europe’s oldest genetics institutes, and it is BGI’s biggest international research partner by count of science papers.
The ties run deep. Two former BGI chief executives, BGI’s chairman and the founder of its animal cloning program previously studied or worked at the university.
KU hosts more than two dozen BGI-funded researchers undertaking science and health doctorates.
Kroer said that the university had been unaware of “claims that BGI has connections with the PLA.”
The university said that other than Zhang’s salary as a professor, no Danish money was spent on the study, which animal rights advocates have argued subjected the animals to suffering and distress.
The student Zhang worked with was in China and employed by BGI, the university said.
Zhang’s research team was not involved in the animal experiments performed in China, but did analyze the genomic data generated from the experiments, it added.
The Lundbeck Foundation, which primarily funds brain research and was incorrectly listed as a funder of the monkey brain study, “has not supported this area of his research, nor do we have any knowledge about it,” a foundation spokesman said.
CONCEALED PURPOSE
Lundbeck said Zhang had told it that he was studying ants and genetics, and how this could explain brain processes in humans.
The foundation said it has asked Zhang to remove its name from the study.
The Carlsberg Foundation, which controls the world’s third-largest brewer and said it gave Zhang a 4 million kronor (US$606,879) fellowship in 2016, told Reuters that it had been incorrectly listed as funding the project.
The paper was published in the Chinese journal Zoological Research, which declined to comment.
Zhang is on the journal’s editorial board.
He told Reuters that the two Danish foundations were mentioned in the paper by mistake.
“We did not spend any funding from the grants I received from these two foundations on this project,” he said in an e-mail.
The journal published a correction removing the foundations’ names in March.
Lundbeck declined to comment on what effects the discovery might have, and Carlsberg said that animal experiments conducted overseas must comply with Danish regulations, but did not comment on the military involvement.
In June last year, KU decided to close a think tank it had run with Shanghai’s Fudan University since 2013, saying that it had adjusted its overall cooperation strategy.
The decision prompted a debate about China inside the university, documents obtained by Reuters under freedom of information rules show.
The university held a meeting in August last year to discuss the closure of the Fudan-linked entity and review its collaboration with China.
“China has engaged in a strategic civil-military fusion of research that often blurs the lines to the outsider,” Jorgen Delman, a China studies professor at KU, said in a note to the university’s head afterwards, recommending better screening of Chinese researchers and consultations with Danish military intelligence to advise on “risks and no-go areas.”
He declined to comment further.
Genetic cloning technology was transferred to BGI after a researcher, Du Yutao (杜玉濤), received her doctorate in 2007 with a team from Danish universities that created the world’s first pigs using a technique called handmade cloning.
She was praised by the Chinese government for bringing the technology to China, which went on to clone genetically modified pigs for the study of human neurological illnesses.
China’s national science program said that cloned pigs were a stepping stone to chimeras, a controversial area where China wanted to lead the world.
Chimeras are organisms composed of cells from two or more species that might be capable of growing organs for human transplantation.
Du is now vice president at BGI Genomics, and won promotion within the Chinese Communist Party, becoming a delegate to its National Congress in 2017.
She did not respond to a request for comment.
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