U.S. failing to stop China from stealing research, report says
WASHINGTON — The United States government has failed to stop China from stealing intellectual property from American universities and lacks a comprehensive strategy for dealing with the threat, a congressional report concluded Monday.
The report says the FBI should be more effective and consistent in warning colleges and universities about the threat of Chinese economic and industrial espionage. It also says agencies that award research grants or provide visas for scientists don’t do enough to monitor or track the recipients, and says universities themselves must do a better job identifying foreign funding sources and conflicts of interest among the scientists on their campuses.
The problem is especially urgent, says the report from the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, because billions of dollars in taxpayer-funded research have “contributed to China’s global rise over the last 20 years” and to its goal of being a world leader in science and technology by 2050.
“As American policy makers navigate an increasingly complicated relationship with China, it is not in our national security interest to fund China’s economic and military development with taxpayer dollars,” the report says.
The report is the most recent government study to analyze Chinese intellectual property theft on college campuses and to scrutinize the shortcomings of the government agencies in addressing the problem. It focuses on Chinese programs that recruit scientists with access to cutting-edge technology in the U.S., incentivizing them to conduct research for Beijing’s gain and even to steal the work of academics in America. In recent years, the report says, those programs have been exploited by scientists who have downloaded sensitive research files before returning to China, filed patents based on U.S. research, lied on grant applications or failed to disclose money they’d received from Chinese institutions.
“The U.S. academic community is in the crosshairs of not only foreign competitors contending for the best and brightest, but also of foreign nation states that seek to transfer valuable intellectual capital and steal intellectual property,” the report states.
The report takes aim at the lack of transparency in how the programs are run, recommending that agencies that distribute research grants stop funding participants in them absent full disclosure of the terms and conditions of membership.
In a statement Monday, the NSF said it is in the process of clarifying policy guidance for researchers on requirements to disclose foreign and domestic funding. It has also barred members of its workforce from participating in talent recruitment programs operated by certain countries, and has commissioned a study on how to “maintain balance between openness and security of science.”