The Biden administration has renewed a science and technology cooperation agreement with China despite complaints about Beijing’s theft of American technology and damaging state-linked hacking operations.
The State Department announced Friday that the 1979 agreement that lapsed this summer had been extended for five years, although the scope of the cooperation described is more limited than in the past.
The department said in a brief statement that the protocol extension includes strengthened intellectual property protections and creates guardrails for protecting researchers. The accord “advances U.S. interests through newly established and strengthened provisions on transparency and data reciprocity,” the State Department said.
Despite the more modest scope of the amended accord, the Chinese government hailed the renewal of the science agreement as a step toward improved relations overall.
Extending the agreement “will advance technological progress in both nations, drive socioeconomic development, enhance collaboration on global challenges and improve the well-being of people worldwide,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said on Monday, according to a report in the state-controlled Global Times.
But on Capitol Hill, Rep. John Moolenaar, Michigan Republican and chairman of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, and several other House members condemned the action. The committee had called for ending the agreement, citing concerns that cooperating on science and technology bolstered the Chinese military.
Mr. Moolenaar and 13 other House members said renewing the agreement in the final days of President Biden’s term is a “clear attempt to tie the hands” of the incoming Trump administration, which could reject it or negotiate a better arrangement.
“We urge you to immediately suspend efforts to renew the U.S.-PRC STA prior to January 20, 2025,” the lawmakers said in a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken, using the acronym for Science and Technology Agreement.
The State Department said the agreement’s extension is part of the Biden administration’s policy of “responsibly managing” strategic competition with China and follows extensive consultations and months of negotiation. The agreement that expired on Aug. 27 was limited by a six-month extension imposed amid U.S.-China tensions.
Unlike previous extensions of the agreement, the amended accord requires that any federal science and technology cooperation with China benefits the United States and “minimizes” risks to national security. The agreement is also limited to “basic research,” does not facilitate the development of critical or emerging technology, and does not explicitly endorse collaborations between American and Chinese private companies or institutions of higher learning.
A 2018 White House report estimated that China’s technology theft costs American companies $225 billion to $600 billion annually. Former National Security Agency Director Keith Alexander has described Chinese theft of U.S. technology as “the greatest transfer of wealth in human history.”
Security officials recently said Chinese intelligence-linked hackers have broken into computer networks of U.S. telecommunications firms and critical infrastructure networks for spying and plotting sabotage.
The House recently passed legislation requiring any extension of the science and technology agreement with China to include 15 days’ notice to Congress, explicit protections for human rights, and curbs on dual civilian-military research.
“While not yet law, the Biden Administration’s decision to ignore Congress’s articulated guardrails is alarming,” the committee said in a statement.
The Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs declined to provide The Washington Times with a copy of the agreement. A spokesman said the accord will be published on the department website.
A Congressional Research Service report said that Chinese cooperation under the agreement was inconsistent and that Beijing had restricted U.S. researchers’ access to certain areas.
Critics in Congress view China as “an unreliable or untrustworthy research partner, citing data restrictions and a lack of forthrightness in sharing scientific results,” the report said.
China cut off access to U.S.-funded coronavirus work at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in 2019. Some intelligence agencies consider a potential leak of a deadly virus from the institute to be the source of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The House select committee also recently produced a report highlighting how federal research funding helped advance Chinese military-related technology in hypersonic and nuclear weapons, artificial intelligence and semiconductors.
Sen. Marco Rubio, Florida Republican and President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for secretary of state, has said he opposes the accord and warned that any agreement with a communist regime that spies on the United States and steals intellectual property “is a horrible idea.”
Miles Yu, a former State Department policymaker, said the agreement should be canceled because it reflects a faulty U.S. engagement strategy with Beijing.
“That engagement strategy has been thoroughly discredited, with a bipartisan consensus, as it has empowered [China] to become the leading tormentor of its enabler, the United States,” said Mr. Yu, now with the Hudson Institute’s China Center.
Roger Pielke, a nonresident senior fellow with the American Enterprise Institute, has said he favors continuing the agreement because the cooperation could, on balance, benefit the U.S.
“I support continuing the U.S.-China STA in the most robust form that can be negotiated between the two nations,” Mr. Pielke wrote in a review of the pact earlier this year. “In my view, its existence is much more important than the exact particulars. In general — and contrary to both Trump and Biden — I view ‘decoupling’ [with China] to be a bad idea and it is also a bad idea in science and technology.”
The CRS report said Beijing’s state control “has allowed the [People’s Republic of China] to shape [science and technology] ties with the United States to fill research gaps, develop competencies and [intellectual property] in priority areas targeted in its industrial policies, and develop PRC talent,” Mr. Pielke said.
• Bill Gertz can be reached at bgertz@washingtontimes.com.
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