Rubio Calls on 22 US Universities to End Ties With Institutions That Support China’s Military

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) on Capitol Hill in Washington on Feb. 23, 2021. Drew Angerer/Pool/AFP via Getty Images

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) has urged 22 American universities to end their academic and research partnerships with Chinese schools that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has tasked with supporting Beijing’s military modernization.

“I remain deeply concerned by the PLA’s [People’s Liberation Army] aggressive campaign to infiltrate America’s research enterprise,” Rubio wrote in letters dated Feb. 8.

“For decades, Beijing has openly exploited the expertise of Chinese students and scholars studying or conducting research in the United States to accelerate the PRC’s economic and military development,” the letters read, referring to the country’s official name, the People’s Republic of China.

The letters were addressed to 22 U.S. universities, which have entered into academic or research partnerships with Chinese universities that are charged with implementing the CCP’s military-civil fusion (MCF) strategy. The state-led strategy seeks to harness civilian-developed research and technology to aid China’s military modernization, thus blurring the line between civilian and military sectors.

MCF also “directs collaboration with foreign universities to acquire cutting edge research and technology to advance its efforts to achieve a world-class military by the year 2049,” according to the U.S. State Department (pdf).

Key technologies, including artificial intelligence (AI) and aerospace technology, are acquired by the CCP through “licit and illicit means,” the State Department noted in a 2020 document. “Joint research institutions, academia, and private firms are all being exploited to build the PLA’s future military systems—often without their knowledge or consent,” it said.

A 2018 report by think tank Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) showed that the PLA sent more than 2,500 Chinese scientists to train and work in overseas universities from 2007 to 2017. Some of those scientists were under civilian cover, but all were sent to “gain skills and knowledge of value to the Chinese military” and “are believed to be party members who returned to China when instructed,” the report stated.

Military delegates stand in formation at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Oct. 9, 2021. Noel Celis/AFP via Getty Images

The recent conviction of a prominent Harvard professor Charles Lieber on charges stemming from his undisclosed ties with Chinese institutions raises “important questions about how the United States assesses risk to its national security within its broader research enterprise,” Rubio said in the letter.

“The PRC is fully integrating Chinese private industry and the PRC’s civilian universities into their MCF strategy,” read the letter.

Last December, Lieber was found guilty by a U.S. jury on all six counts relating to lying about his funding received from Chinese institutions as part of a state-sponsored recruitment program called the Thousand Talents Plan.

At least 68 civilian universities in China have been officially described as part of the regime’s defense system or supervised by the regime’s defense industry agency, ASPI found.

According to December report by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies think tank, dozens of top American universities have academic and research partnerships with Chinese schools that support the regime’s defense industry. Among them, 10 “maintain active sister-school relationships with Chinese universities conducting classified research in support of China’s defense establishment.”

In the letter, Rubio urged the 22 universities to terminate their partnership agreements and “take steps to thoroughly vet your other academic partners in the PRC for similar risks involving the misappropriation of academic research.”