The American government is pumping hundreds of millions of federal research dollars into research projects that are spurring Chinese advancement in cutting-edge military technologies, including "hypersonic weapons, artificial intelligence, fourth generation nuclear weapons technology, and semiconductor technology," a new congressional report has found.
"Due to a lack of legal guardrails around federally funded research, hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. federal research funding over the last decade have contributed to the PRC’s strategic goals by helping the PRC achieve advancements in dual use, critical, and emerging technologies," the House Select Committee on China wrote in a report published late last month.
The findings, compiled as part of a year-and-half-long investigation, show how major American universities are using federal funds to partner with Chinese institutions on a range of research projects that feed the communist nation's military. The bulk of this work is fueled by taxpayer grants from the Pentagon and U.S. intelligence community, providing "back-door access to the very foreign adversary nation whose aggression these capabilities are necessary to protect against," according to the committee.
While American funding for research projects that involve Chinese universities has long raised concerns in Congress, the extent to which the federal government funds such projects has remained opaque. The China committee’s investigation marks one of the most comprehensive reviews to date on how taxpayer funding from America’s defense establishment ultimately builds up Beijing, giving its military a critical edge as diplomatic relations between the United States and communist China deteriorate.
The committee discovered more than 8,800 Pentagon-funded research projects that were conducted alongside Chinese academics affiliated with the country’s state-controlled institutions. Another 185 projects were backed by funding from the U.S. intelligence community.
"The vast majority of these DOD-funded publications constitute advanced research related to dual-use, critical, and emerging technologies," according to the report. "These papers covered topics including hypersonics, directed energy, nuclear and high energy physics, and artificial intelligence and autonomy."
Pentagon-funded research publications engaged in at least 85 collaborations "with China’s primary nuclear weapons development complex," according to a study by the Navy Criminal Investigative Service that was reviewed as part of the investigation.
More than 2,000 Pentagon-funded research papers included Chinese coauthors found to be "directly affiliated with the PRC’s defense research and industrial base."
A sizable portion of these projects have "direct military applications," according to the report, including issues such as "high performance explosives, tracking of targets, and drone operation networks"—weapons that China "would use against the U.S. military in the event of a conflict."
Other collaborations included subjects like "cryptography, eavesdropping, hyperspectral imaging, lithium-ion batteries, aerodynamic angles of attack, electronic warfare, [and] cyber attack detection."
The committee probed three American universities that operate research institutions with Chinese counterparts: the University of California, Berkeley, Georgia Institute of Technology, and the University of Pittsburgh.
While these partnerships outwardly function "under the guise of academic cooperation," they actually "conceal a sophisticated system for transferring critical U.S. technologies and expertise to the PRC, including to blacklisted entities linked to China’s defense and security apparatus."
Documents reviewed by the committee indicate that, through joint U.S.-CCP research collaborations, American academics are enabling "the transfer of expertise, applied research, and technologies related to dual-use, critical, and emerging technologies to the PRC." This is exacerbated by China’s strict control over its research institutions, rules that Americans must play by if they operate in the country.
American academics affiliated with Berkeley, Georgia Tech, and Pitt—including those who "conduct U.S. federally funded research"—routinely travel to China, where they "collaborate on research, advise PRC scholars, teach and train PRC graduate students." They also perform work with top Chinese companies that trade in "critical and emerging technologies with national security implications."
The Tsinghua-Berkeley Shenzhen Institute, for instance, was found to host conferences on "sensitive technologies that convene PLA-linked entities, further solidifying the Institute’s role in the PRC’s system of military-civil fusion."
Several months into the House committee’s investigation, Georgia Tech notified investigators that it was ending its partnership with China’s Tianjin University, which is linked to the country’s military.
Berkeley also informed lawmakers shortly after the report’s publication that they had "started the process of relinquishing all ownership" over the Tsinghua-Berkeley Shenzhen Institute, the school’s joint research hub.
Top American colleges have raked in upwards of $426 million from China since 2011, money that is often obfuscated and not properly reported to the federal government.
Stanford University, for instance, took in $27 million from Chinese entities between 2021 and 2023. The University of Delaware, which houses the Biden Institute, has taken more than $6 million from the country since 2017.
The committee uncovered evidence that Berkeley and Georgia Tech violated the Higher Education Act by failing to report foreign funding from China, which typically results in harsh penalties.
"These undisclosed foreign gifts—likely hundreds of millions, if not billions in total—give PRC entities troubling influence without transparency and contribute to building the research relationships that pose risks to U.S. national security," according to the report.
These schools, however, did not face any federal scrutiny by the Biden-Harris administration, which "failed to open a single enforcement action" during its nearly four years in office.