China is exploiting partnerships with US researchers funded by the US Department of Energy (DOE) to provide the Chinese military with access to sensitive nuclear technology and other innovations with economic and national security applications, a US congressional report published on Wednesday said.
The report says the US must do more to protect high-tech research and ensure that the results of taxpayer-funded work do not end up benefiting Beijing.
The investigation is part of a congressional push to raise a firewall blocking US research from boosting China’s military buildup when the two countries are locked in a tech and arms rivalry.
Photo: AP
Investigators from the US House of Representatives Select Committee on Strategic Competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party and the House Committee on Education and the Workforce identified more than 4,300 academic papers published between June 2023 and June of this year that involved collaborations between DOE-funded scientists and Chinese researchers. About half of the papers involved Chinese researchers affiliated with China’s military or industrial base.
Particularly concerning, investigators found that federal funds went to research collaborations with Chinese state-owned laboratories and universities that work directly for China’s military, including some listed in a Pentagon database of Chinese military companies with operations in the US.
The report also detailed collaborations between US researchers and groups blamed for cyberattacks as well as human rights abuses in China.
The Chinese embassy in Washington said the select committee “has long smeared and attacked China for political purposes and has no credibility to speak of.”
“A handful of US politicians are overstretching the concept of national security to obstruct normal scientific research exchanges, a move that wins no public support and is bound to fail,” embassy spokesman Liu Pengyu (劉鵬宇) said.
The DOE routinely funds advanced research into nuclear energy and the development and disposal of nuclear weaponry, along with a long list of other high-tech fields such as quantum computing, materials science and physics. It doles out hundreds of millions of dollars each year for research. It oversees 17 national laboratories that have led the development in many technologies.
The report followed a number of congressional investigations into federally funded research involving Chinese scientists and researchers.
Last year, a report released by Republicans found that partnerships between US and Chinese universities over the past decade had allowed hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding to help Beijing develop critical technology that could help strengthen its military.
Another investigation this year revealed that the Pentagon in a two-year period funded hundreds of projects in collaboration with Chinese entities linked to China’s defense industry.
House committee researchers made recommended a new standardized approach to assessing the national security risks of research, as well as requirements that the department share information about research ties with China with other US government agencies to make it easier to spot problems.
US Representative John Moolenaar, who chairs the select committee on China, said in a statement that the “investigation reveals a deeply alarming problem: The Department of Energy failed to ensure the security of its research and it put American taxpayers on the hook for funding the military rise of our nation’s foremost adversary.”
Moolenaar this year introduced legislation aimed at preventing research funding in science and technology and defense from going to collaborations or partnerships with “foreign adversary-controlled” entities that pose a national security risk.
The legislation cleared the House, but failed to advance to become part of the annual sweeping defense policy bill.
It was met with strong opposition from scientists and researchers, who said the measures were too broad and could chill collaboration and undermine the US’ competitive edge in science and technology.
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