De-risking of research becomes harder as ‘grey’ zones emerge

Links between European researchers and Chinese military universities made public in recent weeks have heightened concerns among academics and institutions in Europe about the risk of cooperating with Chinese institutions that may hide their military links.

But many researchers are unsure how to identify the danger signals: due diligence is complicated by vague definitions of ‘dual-use technologies’ that can be for both civilian and military use, as well as emerging ‘grey zones’; and the shifting geopolitical environment makes it harder to keep up with research risks linked to economic competitiveness.

Compared to even a year or two ago, academics and researchers in Europe, including Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands and the Nordic countries, have become more aware of research security issues in collaborations with universities in China.

In part, this is due to a number of cases hitting the headlines concerning Chinese researchers arrested for spying or denied visas.

In late April, Germany arrested three suspected Chinese spies who were allegedly seeking to procure dual-use civilian-military technologies for Beijing.

The alleged spies targeted German universities, according to the country’s federal public prosecutor’s office, and one had a contract with Germany’s Chemnitz University of Technology.

Earlier this year, a Chinese teacher-researcher was prevented from taking up a post at the prestigious French engineering school, the Ecole Nationale Supérieure d'Arts et Métiers (ENSAM), Paris, where he was expected to give lectures and pursue research at a restricted access laboratory.

The case came to light after he appealed against the decision at an appeals body in Nantes, France, where his appeal was rejected on 21 August.

A hearing in August revealed that a confidential note from the French intelligence services led to the visa refusal. The intelligence agency argued the researcher had worked “in a sector in which the civil and military applications represent a risk for [French] national interests”.

The agency said the researcher had studied at Northwestern Polytechnical University, X’ian, which specialises in armaments research, and referred to the researcher’s work and co-publications with another Chinese researcher at Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, which it said cooperates actively with China’s military.

Tracking military-linked universities

In 2020 the United States government banned students from China’s so-called ‘Seven Sons of National Defence’ universities from taking up graduate studies in the US, due to their military links.

The seven institutions, which fall under China’s Ministry of Industry and Technology, include Beihang University in Beijing, Beijing Institute of Technology, Harbin Engineering University, Harbin Institute of Technology, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Nanjing University of Science and Technology, and Northwestern Polytechnical University in Xi’an.

The widely used Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s China Defence Universities Tracker classifies the ‘Seven Sons’ as “very high” risk research partners, having “deep roots in the military and defence industry”.

But a report this year by Datenna, a data intelligence platform focusing on China, found 84 collaborations between European (including the UK) and ‘Seven Sons’ universities.

“This highlights that established collaborations exist even in cases where there is a known connection to dual-use research and thus a heightened need for conducting due diligence”, the report titled Navigating Challenges and Risks in Sino-European Academic Collaborations stated.

Some universities in Europe say they continue to collaborate with Chinese universities on projects they deem to be “non-sensitive”, according to reports. But others fear that in the absence of a EU-wide ban, or better information sources, researchers may simply be unaware of the risk.

For example, a recent survey of 24 research heads in Austria, 10 of them with previous working relationships with China, showed that only one third of them were familiar with the term ‘Seven Sons of National Defence’.

The survey, published in the August edition of ‘Reconnect China’, an EU-funded China research project based at Ghent University in Belgium, concluded that “few researchers know basic terms of research security, in particular when they are connected to Chinese institutions … even if they plan to establish or have already been engaged in a research cooperation with Chinese partners”.

In January this year the Belgian regional government of Flanders revealed in parliament it was banning new collaborations with China’s ‘Seven Sons’ universities.

The Flanders government is also setting up a knowledge security desk to report suspicious individuals to state security, based on a system already in place in the Netherlands, and to help universities to assess risks, the Belgian news agency Belga reported.

De-risking is ‘not that simple’

In March last year EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen declared the EU must ‘de-risk’ its China relations. This includes keeping EU inventions away from China’s military, but without going as far as the US in ‘decoupling’ from China collaborations altogether.

Many researchers in Europe do not know how to approach the problem of China competition, “so they were relieved when this concept of ‘de-risking’ came up,” noted Ágota Révész, a former Hungarian diplomat in China, now manager for the Awareness, Security and Knowledge in International Collaboration project at the Heimholz Centre Potsdam, German Research Centre for Geosciences. “But de-risking is not that simple. It is actually very hard to do,” she told University World News.

Researchers say it is not easy to glean adequate information on Chinese military-linked universities to differentiate those that are risky and those that are not.

“If there is uncertainty, then [European universities] just cut ties with China,” Révész said, adding that this is now happening even when universities have long-standing research collaborations with China.

Révész added: “We do have intellectual property issues [with China] and in Europe there is the fear of the loss of technological competitiveness, so what we are facing is a major rearrangement of academic research,” she said, noting this goes beyond de-risking.

Rebecca Arcesati, senior analyst at the Mercator Institute for China Studies (MERICS), a think tank in Berlin, points to China’s widespread use of technologies for national security purposes.

“Risk is a big issue when it comes to emerging technology areas like artificial intelligence, where the Chinese government has big ambitions to dominate new fields and also to leverage otherwise widely available commercial technologies to modernise its military. In Europe we simply do not have the legal and policy tools to deal with this,” she told University World News.

“If you want to have zero risk, then the only answer is to disengage,” said Arcesati.

An increased national security emphasis in China under President Xi Jinping, including the strategic role of science and technology, as well as the country’s aims to become a great power through science and innovation, has made virtually all science subservient to the military and security agenda.

“China is a particularly challenging research partner at the moment because of how exposed the European innovation system is to China, and how civilian technologies and research are increasingly being leveraged for military purposes,” Arcesati noted.

Others note that civil-military fusion of research is advancing so quickly that it is less clear whether any dual-use list such as that used by the United States for its export controls can be valid in the medium to longer term.

Emerging ‘grey zones’

Lynn Sibert, a PhD student in the Department of Sociology at the Technical University of Berlin, researching risk assessment and research security measures in international science cooperation, pointed to the emergence of ‘grey zones’ which further complicate the research environment.

These include knowledge that is not yet on any officially recognised dual-use list but which could be used for military purposes in the medium to long term, she said during a recent webinar organised by the China in Europe Research Network (CHERN).

“While researchers’ institutions are expected to manage risk and rethink or rearrange their collaborations, more questions and ambiguities are emerging, which will ultimately affect not only relations with China, but presumably … also other international partners as well,” Sibert said.

Currently research follows an ‘entity-based’ approach which requires researchers to be wary of collaboration with listed military-linked institutions or companies.

But Sibert observed that many researchers say export control and dual-use laws are not helpful. Researchers “have the expectation to de-risk but they fear their research does not really fall under dual-use export control areas,” she said.

Sibert added: “There are areas, like climate change [technologies], where dual-use and export control is not that binding” but there is still a sense that compliance programmes are required.

“Applying the dual-use concept as a clear orientation for deciding whether to cooperate or not, in which areas to cooperate and [through] what form to cooperate, is in no way guaranteed [to counter risk],” she said.

Economic security

Both Révész and Sibert pointed to the emergence of ‘economic security’ as an area of concern in Europe. Related to fears of erosion of economic competitiveness if some countries are able to race ahead in key technologies, this notion is beginning to be included in the debate about research security.

Sibert later told University World News the extension of research security and de-risking issues into other domains – such as economic security – has left many researchers uncertain even when their research does not fall under dual-use or export control rules.

“Precisely because de-risking and research security also encompass strategic dimensions of economic security, in addition to classic export control objectives of national security, the long dominant science policy concept of basic research is also being challenged,” according to Sibert.

She pointed to climate research where dual-use issues are not always apparent but where there is still a need for more secure research cooperation for “economic competitive reasons”, and noted “the feeling is growing that other areas also need compliance programmes, which some are referring to as ‘export control plus’”.

According to Arcesati, export controls have exemptions for fundamental research and so universities say they are complying with the applicable regulations and, beyond that, governments should not tell them what to do. However, even the notion of fundamental research is becoming blurred as research is moving at a cracking pace.

As a result, “Researchers should try to think about the potential applications of their research, and universities should be in a position to assess potential applications in certain research areas,” Révész told University World News.

Georgia Tech

Warnings about collaborating with China’s military-linked universities have been commonplace in recent years, particularly from the US, and from the intelligence agencies of its allies.

Nonetheless the announcement in September by Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) that it will exit the Shenzhen Institute that it set up in partnership with China’s Tianjin University raised concerns in Europe that inadvertent collaboration with some military-linked Chinese universities could also adversely impact their research collaborations with the US.

In a letter dated 9 May to Georgia Tech President Ángel Cabrera, seeking detail of the institution’s involvement in military-linked projects, US lawmakers contended Tianjin University “is deeply embedded in a Chinese military-civil fusion under which purportedly civilian companies, universities, and technologies are leveraged for military ends”.

Steven McLaughlin, provost and executive vice-president for academic affairs at Georgia Tech, while insisting lawmakers’ concerns were “all unfounded”, acknowledged the partnership had become “untenable”.

Federal legislation, passed by the US Congress on 10 September and currently making its way through the legislative process, will, when enacted, bar US universities that collaborate with institutions on the US export control entity list from receiving any US Defence Department funding. Georgia Tech is a huge recipient of such funding.

The act seeks to bar any university in China involved in implementing military-civil fusion, participating in China’s defence industrial base, affiliated with the Chinese State Administration for Science Technology and Industry for National Defence, receiving funding for any organisation under the Communist Party’s Central Military Commission, or providing support to any government or party security, defence, police or intelligence organisation.

The ‘only way’ is to decouple

The decoupling of Georgia Tech, described by US Congress committee members as a top research university “critical to America’s technological advancement and economic competitiveness”, has also led many in the US to argue that to eliminate any suspicion, fine-tuning collaborations to reduce risk may be impossible and that the only way is to decouple.

Arcesati believes there may be a case for European government intervention to bar students from China’s military-linked institutions. She referred to China’s National University of Defence Technology, which still has research collaborations with European partners. “This is where, for example, visa screening can come in.”

“But for civilian universities that have ties with the PLA [People’s Liberation Army], I think we need a case-by-case approach where it depends on the discipline, the specific project, what knowledge is shared and how.”

“In some cases, more hands-on government intervention would be needed. But it's a very big sell, and it's very difficult to do in some countries, which value scientific freedom,” Arcesati said.

“You can't have a regulation that tells universities where to collaborate and where not to collaborate; it would be really difficult because of the legal and the political constraints that we have in Europe,” she noted.