Republicans in the US House of Representatives are escalating their targeting of US-China joint institutes and degree programmes, identifying dozens of such partnerships as “high-risk” for the first time in a report released on Friday.
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In a 39-page report, the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party and the House Committee on Education and the Workforce argued that joint degree programmes – particularly those in science and technology – provided China “sustained access to US expertise” and that joint institutes operate “under the thumb of the [Chinese Communist Party]”.
In total, the committees name about 50 ongoing partnerships, including a physics institute between New York University and East China Normal University; a public health doctorate programme between Johns Hopkins University and Tsinghua University; an MBA programme between the University of Minnesota and Sun Yat-sen University; and a master’s in bioengineering offered jointly by Beijing University of Chemical Technology and the University of Georgia.
“These partnerships must end,” said congressman John Moolenaar of Michigan, the chair of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, in a social media video on Friday.
Friday’s move is the latest step in House Republicans’ campaign to curb US-China academic partnerships amid concern that they could advance Beijing’s military and technological modernisation.
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Factors the committees say render a partnership “high-risk” include having links to any of China’s so-called “seven sons of national defence”, hosting military-focused entities, or having ties to defence or intelligence end-uses.
Beijing, for its part, has previously said that cooperation in science and technology with the US was “mutually beneficial”. In recent years, it has been encouraging more Americans to study in China, following the goal set by Chinese President Xi Jinping at a 2023 summit in San Francisco to have 50,000 young Americans visit the country over five years.