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Researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Wuhan Institute of Physics and Mathematics. Photo: Xinhua

China set to surpass US as Australia’s main academic collaborator, report finds

  • The newly uncovered trend has raised national security concerns and led to calls for greater due diligence in partnering with Chinese institutes
  • Others, however, dismiss such talk and say limiting engagement with the rising power is unlikely to improve its human rights record
Australia
China will overtake the United States as Australia’s main collaborator on scientific research within months, a new report has found, spotlighting the continued debate in academia between capitalising on funding for research and protecting national security and human rights.

The Sydney-based Australian-China Relations Institute (ACRI) found that the switch could take place as early as the end of this year, based on the number of Australian peer-reviewed papers with a China-affiliated co-author.

The number of Australian peer-reviewed papers with a Chinese co-author has shot up in the past 20 years. Green colors books. Photo: Shutterstock

Only 1 per cent of said papers had a co-author from a Chinese institution in 1998, jumping to 15 per cent last year. Those with an American co-author, meanwhile, increased from 11 to 16 per cent over the same period, according to the report released on Friday.

The number of papers jointly written by Australian and Chinese academics among the most-cited top 1 per cent has also increased – from just four in 1998 to 389 in 2017, the report added.

China slams Australian broadcaster over report on Uygur detentions in Xinjiang

This newly uncovered trend has led several academics to call for greater due diligence in partnering with Chinese institutes, while others said limiting engagement with the rising power would not improve its human rights record. China has come under fire recently for the mass detention of Muslims and other minorities – most notably Uygurs – in its westernmost province of Xinjiang, though Beijing maintains this is necessary for national security reasons.

Australian Strategic Policy Institute researcher Alex Joske said the report highlighted the need to ensure Australians were not helping “put Uygurs in camps and train weapons scientists”, while Jane Golley, director of the Australian National University’s Australian Centre on China in the World, told local media that halting collaboration would leave Australia “left outside the game”.

The ACRI – which was set up with funds from Chinese property developer Huang Xiangmo, who was stripped of his Australian residency earlier this year over his alleged links to China’s Communist Party – noted that Australia’s annual R&D spending of A$20-25 billion (US$14-17.5 billion) was a fraction of that spent by the US or China.
Huang Xiangmo (left) with Malcolm Turnbull, former prime minister of Australia. Photo: ACPPRC

The country’s future prosperity would thus depend on “being open to cross-border flows of new technologies and creating new knowledge through research collaboration” though it conceded that “concerns around national security and ethics” could hinder this.

Last week, the University of Technology Sydney – which hosts the ACRI – announced it had begun a review of a A$10 million partnership with the Chinese state-owned China Electronics Technology Group, which developed an app used in the surveillance of Uygurs in Xinjiang, while the Perth-based Curtin University said it would re-examine its procedures after an academic was revealed to have worked on artificial intelligence used to identify Chinese ethnic minorities.

‘Stain of the century’: Pompeo lashes out at China over Uygur treatment

“I believe we have to be more aware, morally and strategically, of research collaborations we are undertaking with China,” said Brendan Thomas-Noone, a research fellow from the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney.

“Working on technologies like facial recognition or big-data analysis with Chinese state-owned corporations that are directly involved in China’s persecution of Uygurs in Xinjiang, for instance, is morally not conscionable for universities to undertake.

“We should be engaging with China on pharmaceuticals, health, agriculture and environmental research and commercialisation projects [instead].”

An Australian and Chinese flag fly in front of Sydney Opera House. Photo: AFP

In April, Canberra announced A$4.7 million in funding to create five new joint research centres between Australian universities and Chinese research institutions.

The announcement came weeks after Australia’s Department of Defence failed in a bid to secure sweeping new powers to restrict international research collaboration after an independent review recommended against such a “broad approach” to growing national security and technology transfer concerns.

The review’s findings were broadly welcomed at the time by the university sector, which had feared a clampdown on joint research and cooperation.

China-Australia relations ‘will not be helped’ by foreign influence register

James Laurenceson, ACRI acting director, said that in reality, most research collaboration with China did not present national security risks or ethical dilemmas “unless one draws an extremely long bow”.

“This is not to dismiss the possibility, but rather the risks should be accurately weighed based on facts and evidence,” he said.

Laurenceson said that while there were legitimate concerns about joint research with China, it would be counterproductive to completely rule out collaboration in promising emerging fields such as artificial intelligence and quantum computing.

“There is evidence that sometimes risks can be exaggerated. For example, one common claim is that research collaboration with China facilitates intellectual property theft,” he said. “But collaboration leads to knowledge creation. It’s hard to steal knowledge that doesn’t yet exist.”

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