UW says it needs national security guidance

Concerns raised over academic collaborations with Chinese military researchers

WATERLOO — The University of Waterloo says it will act on any concerns involving its researchers and national security — but that warning needs to come from the federal government.

The university is responding to a Globe and Mail story about collaborations between researchers at Canadian universities and scientists with links to Chinese military intelligence.

The story highlighted a 2017 paper Zou Xiaoliang and Zhao Guihua published with the University of Waterloo’s Jonathan Li on advanced satellite image analysis. Both Xiaoliang and Guihua are associated with a mapping unit of the People’s Liberation Army, according to the Globe — military ties they don’t mention in their work.

The university says it’s the responsibility of the federal government to decide which foreign researchers can enter the country. Waterloo’s researchers collaborate with scientists around the globe, and the university says it’s not able to make assessments of how that work impacts national security.

“We’re not equipped to,” said Matthew Grant, the director of media relations at the University of Waterloo.

“Issues of national security or immigration, those things are the mandate of the federal government... If there were a national security concern, we’d expect we’d receive advice from the federal government. And we’d absolutely follow it.”

Grant said the collaboration on satellite image analysis was “peer-reviewed, academic research” that was published and widely available. Anyone can access it, he said.

“This is research collaboration not unlike collaborations that

happen among academics anywhere across the globe,” he said. “To my knowledge, it’s not private research.”

It’s one of dozens of examples of Canadian academics collaborating on projects with Chinese military researchers — which critics say raises concerns that Canada may be unintentionally helping China modernize its armed forces.

Grant argues universities have been encouraged to grow global research partnerships through federal government grants. Waterloo sends co-op students to companies in more than 100 countries around the world, he said.

Without direction from federal agencies, the university can’t pick which partnerships are bad for national interest, he said.

“We have thousands of collaborations across the globe,” he said. “Universities across Canada have been encouraged to develop international research partnerships.”

Partnerships with Chinese military researchers are surprisingly common. The author of a new report by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute cites 687 academic papers co-written by Canadian researchers with Chinese military scholars since 2006.

“Helping a rival military develop its expertise and technology isn’t in the national interest, yet it’s not clear that Western universities and governments are fully aware of this phenomenon,” the report’s author Alex Joske wrote.

While some debate the benefit of cutting off collaborations with the Chinese military, others are more concerned.

Paul Fieguth, the director of the Vision and Imaging Processing Lab at the University of Waterloo, told the Globe he’s worked with at least one researcher from China’s National University of Defense Technology, which reports directly to the Central Military Commission of the Communist Party.

But that work had no military connections, and he tries to avoid research with military researchers or any kind, he said.

“If Canada banned all collaborations with Chinese military researchers, I would have no problem with that,” he told the Globe and Mail. “Although I expect such a ban would cast an exceptionally wide net, probably interfering with a wide range of legitimate research.”

Universities across Canada have been encouraged to develop international research partnerships. MATTHEW GRANT University of Waterloo