Ban Academic Tech Transfers to China

University students in the UK in an undated file photo. Chris Radburn/PA

Commentary

The highest-ranked engineering university in the UK, Imperial College London (ICL), hosts scientists who collaborate with China on research that most likely has military applications.

According to a March 5 article by the Financial Times, ICL researchers have published “at least five studies with figures from organizations at the heart of China’s military-industrial complex” since 2023.

An ICL website brags about its dubious distinction of being “the UK’s number one university collaborator with the People’s Republic of China, [with] over 2,600 Chinese students at the College, over 200 Chinese staff and 7,000 alumni either from China, or currently residing in China. Chinese is the largest single nationality represented at Imperial (other than UK students). There are also more than 600 research papers published with Chinese institutions every year.”

The five studies with potential military applications were published two years after the U.S. determination of an ongoing genocide in China and amid growing threats by the Chinese military against Taiwan and the Philippines. Collaboration between the UK and China’s military raises serious questions about potential British complicity in genocide and territorial aggression.

The joint ICL–China research of concern includes “material limits of a class of advanced high-strength steel ... high-powered batteries ... how heat treatment could strengthen a common titanium alloy, Ti-6Al-4V ... ‘electromagnetic interference shielding’ of a new type of carbon-fibre-reinforced polymer (CFRP) composite ... [and] how thermoplastic fibre-metal laminate (FML) panels responded to blasts within a confined space.”

All have potential military applications, according to the Financial Times. One of the coauthors from China has “published nine papers that examine either warheads or protecting naval ships from explosions,” the Financial Times noted.

ICL isn’t a first-time offender. A November 2023 documentary found a leading ICL computer science professor who “collaborated with researchers at a Chinese university to publish papers on the use of artificial intelligence weaponry that could be used to benefit the Chinese military,” according to The Guardian. The research included eight papers that developed the use of artificial intelligence to coordinate fleets of drones. The professor claimed his science was “basic” and could “benefit societies worldwide.”

The roots of the threat from ICL could be from 2015 when the university hosted a high-level visit that included Chinese leader Xi Jinping and UK Chancellor George Osborne. By 2022, the ICL was under scrutiny for links to China’s military. It subsequently closed four labs.

However, according to the Financial Times, ICL continues to collaborate with Huawei and the Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC). Huawei has reportedly sold its products for intelligence gathering, surveillance, and ideological reeducation.

AVIC is China’s top maker of military aircraft. Its revenues in 2023 were $20.6 billion, a 4.7 percent increase from 2022.

ICL reportedly pays Ph.D. students from China, knowing they are ideologically vetted by China’s regime before selection, according to its 2023 program guidelines. The ICL student newspaper reports that the Chinese regime requires a “rigorous review of the applicant’s political ideology” prior to acceptance, registration at the Chinese Embassy in the UK upon arrival, and voluntary acceptance of the regime’s “guidance and management” while in the UK, according to the guidelines.

Any failure to follow program requirements results in a student’s termination and return to China, where he must repay fees. After graduation, student recipients must, in any case, return to China for at least two years. ICL reportedly pays between 500,000 pounds and 1 million pounds (between $642,000 and $1.2 million) annually for all 15 scholars from China, plus one return flight each.

Some British politicians take a position against academics working with China’s military, though their shy commentary is too little, too late. U.S. politicians are a little better.

What really is needed is a cessation of nearly all military, economic, scientific, technology, engineering, and mathematical collaboration with countries engaged in genocide or military aggression against U.S. allies. This should include a ban on professors, scientists, graduate students, and undergraduates from adversary nations who could take research from democracies back to their autocratic nations and use it against our freedoms and human rights.

Academic leadership, which often claims to have the highest of ethics, has not policed itself sufficiently to completely end collaboration with genocidal regimes. New laws are required to mandate what is right, even when not as profitable as the alternative. Stronger export restrictions on military-use science and technology that emerge from universities and laboratories, including “pure science” and “basic scientific research,” would be a good first step.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.