China’s campus mischief is a security wake-up call

Sharri Markson and Kylar Loussikian’s expose of scientists in our universities plugged into a secretive, strategic operation of the Chinese Communist Party is sobering and calls for a carefully thought through response from the Morrison government. This under-the-radar co-option of taxpayer-funded expertise and research by a foreign power has obvious implications for national security at a time of intensifying geopolitical conflict.

Our investigative reports show dozens of researchers at major universities have been recruited to a CCP program called the Thousand Talents Plan, which fits into longstanding attempts by China to harness by whatever method necessary the innovation and technology of the outside world to strengthen its own position in the great power rivalry that obsesses the regime, especially under President-for-life Xi Jinping. Academics in our higher education system have been given an extra funding stream from this CCP program and patents flowing from research here in Australia have ended up with Chinese entities. In some cases our universities were oblivious to this, and at first denied it was happening when contacted by The Australian. The risks and conflicts are obvious and unacceptable. Universities have announced reviews, as they should, but the ultimate responsibility to ensure proper safeguards lies with the federal government, which clearly needs more effective, expert and well-resourced oversight in this area.

These are not easy issues. Universities and the federal Treasury have had strong financial incentives to maximise links with Chinese institutions and to smooth over irritants and obstacles in bilateral relationships. The higher education business model is built largely on the China market, and fee income from mainland students has driven a booming services export industry. It’s also the case that international research collaboration is a good thing and does not have to be a zero-sum exercise. In the same way, ethnic Chinese expatriates in our universities make a significant contribution not only through their research but as go-betweens and enablers of productive joint projects. Unfortunately, as Chinese-Australians themselves have been quick to point out, the regime under Mr Xi has shown that it is all too willing to put first its own narrow interests and chauvinistic ambitions, to regard ethnic Chinese wherever they are as owing loyalty to the CCP’s hegemonic project, and to treat the intellectual property of open democracies as something to be exploited, including by theft and deception. Even if universities did not have financial reasons to downplay these risks, the task of policing interventions such as the Thousand Talents Plan is a headache. International research is a process of exchange more complex than the export of iron ore. So-called blue-sky research, with no immediately obvious military or strategic value, can end up having very pointy applications. And there are important fields, such as materials science and sensor technology, where there is a multiplicity of real-world uses, some innocuous and some militarily momentous. Universities thrive with openness, not suspicion, yet they have to contend with an authoritarian regime that seeks to harness all human activity to its accumulation of power, and does so with great skill in the dark arts of covert statecraft.

These dilemmas are not new, and both the university sector and government have insisted that they had in place adequate yet flexible rules and policies to manage the risks. That won’t wash any more. Troubling evidence of the range and depth of foreign interference by China in Australia has mounted up remarkably quickly. Two related changes will apply severe pressure to politicians and vice-chancellors to become much more active and successful in protecting our national interests.

The first is that Mr Xi has proven right the sceptics who doubted that China’s economic opening would reform its politics and render it a benign and co-operative international partner. From territorial provocation through cyber attacks and hostage-taking to industrial-scale human rights abuse, the CCP regime has forced many people, Australians especially, to give up illusions or indifference about the rising power of China. The high-stakes conflict between the US and China, with Australia caught in the middle, is undeniable. The second change is driven by the economic catastrophe of COVID-19. As this social pain deepens, Australians will not tolerate institutions — political or educational — that fail to serve our national interests effectively, and this will require an elimination of incompetence, waste, abuses and conflicts. A higher education system drawing on public funds and having its work diverted to serve an oppressive regional bully is a state of affairs that voters will not accept.