US Gave Almost $29 Million to Chinese Entities for Joint Research Since 2015: Report

A technician works at a DNA tech lab in Beijing on Aug. 22, 2018. Greg Baker/AFP/Getty Images

U.S. government agencies sent almost $29 million in taxpayer dollars “directly to Chinese entities” for joint research over a five-year period ending in 2021, recently released findings show.

From fiscal years 2015 through 2021, “the CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention], NIH [National Institutes of Health], and DOD [Department of Defense] provided 22 awards totaling $28.9 million directly to Chinese entities, including universities and other research institutions,” the Government Accountability Office (GAO) said on Sept. 29 about a trove of analyses.

Researchers found the federal funding focused on “multiple scientific disciplines,” aiding Chinese entities in conducting research on “disease surveillance, vaccination studies, and the development of new drugs,” as well as “alternative technologies to propel vehicles such as drones.”

The release of the 38-page GAO report (pdf) follows a January request from House Republican Conference Chairwoman Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) and Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. They asked the GAO to review federal funds provided to China or to entities controlled by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) for collaborative research, and U.S. contributions to multilateral institutions.

Stefanik described such funding as “troubling.”

“China’s deception and stonewalling of the truth behind the origins of COVID-19 has led to millions of senseless deaths and trillions of dollars in economic destruction across the globe,” she said in a statement to The Epoch Times.

The three agencies provided funding for a total of 13 Chinese entities for joint publications, information sharing, and workshops, while 84 percent of the direct funding went to the University of Hong Kong, Peking University, and the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, known as the Chinese CDC.

While receiving almost $5 million from the NIH and the CDC in recent years, the Chinese CDC had been suppressing information about the COVID-19 outbreak domestically and snubbed U.S. offers of assistance, although any health data would have been crucial to formulate a more effective pandemic containment strategy and minimize the disease’s global spread.

Health workers wearing personal protective equipment walk on a street in a neighborhood during a COVID-19 lockdown in the Jing'an district in Shanghai on April 8, 2022. Hector Retamal/AFP via Getty Images

“Even more frightening,” Stefanik continued, “we still have no idea how much total money has been sent to China due to lax reporting requirements. Make no mistake, the Chinese Communist Party’s deception throughout the pandemic confirmed that China is not a reliable partner.”

‘Part of the Full Picture’

Investigators found that Chinese entities also received federal research funds through subawards, yet due to reporting requirements—or lack thereof—the report said it was unable to specify the extent of such funding.

In a statement provided to The Epoch Times, McCaul said he’s “grateful” to the GAO professionals who “pull back the curtain on American taxpayer dollars funding entities in China.”

“Unfortunately, the tens of millions of dollars in research collaboration they found is only part of the full picture,” he said. “The Biden administration stopped the Office of Management and Budget’s efforts to track federal spending in China that began under Trump at my request. I will keep working with my colleagues to track and stop every U.S. government dollar that is going into China, and ultimately, into the hands of the CCP.”

White House officials didn’t respond by press time to requests by The Epoch Times for comment.

The CDC and NIH awarded the vast majority of the funding ($28.6 million) through cooperative agreements to Chinese entities in Hong Kong and mainland China, while the rest, from the DOD, went to entities in Hong Kong.

The GAO noted the U.S. government treated the territory separately from mainland China until July 2020, when a Beijing-imposed new national security law took effect.

Awards to Chinese state universities also remain highly controversial given the CCP’s intellectual property theft efforts. The extensive state-sponsored espionage of IP and research at the expense of the interests of other countries has been referred to as the “copy-replace model.”

A researcher works in a Chinese biopharma lab in Shenyang, in China's northeast Liaoning Province, on June 10, 2020. Noel Celis/AFP via Getty Images

Such practices come along with well-financed, state-run recruitment programs such as the Thousand Talents Plan, which has attracted promising overseas Chinese and foreign experts in the fields of science and technology to fuel China’s innovation drive. The program has been perceived as a threat to U.S. national security over intellectual property theft concerns.

The GAO report states that of the 22 awards to Chinese entities from fiscal years 2015 through 2021, 17 were closed while five were continuing as of July, including three from NIH and two from CDC.

In fiscal year 2020 alone, federal agencies committed about $1.4 billion for research and development collaboration with foreign entities, per the report.