GOP Report: American Research Funding May Have Supported Chinese Military Technology

A new congressional report from Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives claims that federal research funding may have provided financial support to Chinese military technology, to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars.

According to Fox News, the report from the House Select Committee on China Competition, in collaboration with the Education and Workforce Committee, determined that up to 9,000 joint research publications by American and Chinese academics were funded either through the Department of Defense (DOD) or the Intelligence Community (IC) which were written by co-authors who had ties to China’s “defense and security apparatus.” Some of the entities to which these authors were tied were even on the Commerce Department’s blacklist.

“The purpose of that research funding is to generate advancements that will eventually become applied warfighting and intelligence capabilities to protect America against adversarial nations,” the report’s summary states. “Yet the research that the DOD and the IC are funding is providing back-door access to the very foreign adversary nation whose aggression these capabilities are necessary to protect against.”

Of the 9,000 research papers, over 2,000 were written by Chinese individuals with direct connections to China’s defense research and industrial base.

The committee report says that China has been deliberately coordinating an effort to team up with American universities in order to transfer American technologies and skills back to China, in a manner that circumvents various restrictions implemented by the government.

As such, the report recommends even stricter rules regarding federal research funds, including banning American researchers from working with Chinese universities, companies, and other entities if they receive grants from the governments.

The report also blamed the Biden-Harris Administration for failing to enforce rules on the books that are meant to reduce Chinese influence over American universities.

“The Biden-Harris Department of Education has failed to open a single enforcement action under Section 117 of the Higher Education Act in the last four years, despite widespread evidence of lack of reporting,” the report explains. “These undisclosed foreign gifts — likely hundreds of millions, if not billions in total — gives PRC entities troubling influence without transparency and contribute to building the research relationships that pose risks to U.S. national security.”