House Panels Call for More ‘Guardrails’ on Research With China

Congress should strengthen the “guardrails” around federally funded research collaboration between American universities and Chinese defense-linked universities to ensure China does not obtain technology to improve its military or commit human rights abuses, two House committees said in a new report this week.

Research collaboration of all kinds should be prohibited with the “highest risk entities,” including those affiliated with the People’s Liberation Army, Chinese defense labs or China’s Ministry of Public Security, the House Select Committee on China and the House Education and the Workforce Committee said.

The House panels would also block research ties on dual-use, critical or emerging technology with China's broader defense industrial base, including state-owned defense conglomerates, such as the Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC), and Chinese companies "that are deeply intertwined in the defense and surveillance apparatus," such as Huawei and Hikvision.

The industrial base restriction could be achieved by banning collaboration with entities on U.S. government blacklists, such as the Defense Department’s Section 1260H list of Chinese military companies and Section 1286 list of foreign institutions engaging in problematic activity, the report says. The report recommends expanding those lists to include entities conducting defense research.

The House committees said their yearlong investigation found that a lack of guardrails allowed hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. federal research funding over the last decade to help China advance its capabilities in artificial intelligence, hypersonic and nuclear weapons, and semiconductors.

The committees welcomed the Georgia Institute of Technology’s recent decision to sever ties with China-based Tianjin University, which is on the Bureau of Industry and Security’s Entity List (see 2409090016), and they urged more universities to take similar steps. They said that shortly before publishing their report, they were informed by the University of California, Berkeley, that the university has begun ending its partnership with China’s Tsinghua University through the Tsinghua Berkeley Shenzhen Institute (TBSI) in Shenzhen, China.