How the CCP recruits our best and brightest minds
Australian academics are giving China access to their inventions amid concerns they could be used for military or intelligence purposes.
Australian academics are giving the Chinese Communist Party access to their technology and inventions where there is the risk they could be used for military or intelligence purposes under Chinese President Xi Jinping’s military-civil fusion.
Of particular concern to security experts is how technology and inventions, paid for by the Australian taxpayer, are being sent to China and used to advance their military and intelligence.
Australian Strategic Policy Institute analyst Alex Joske revealed in a report entitled The China Defence Universities Tracker that China’s nuclear weapons agency is actively recruiting overseas talent via the Thousand Talents plan. A leading organisation for China’s nuclear weapons program, the China Academy of Engineering Physics, has recruited 57 scientists through the plan, according to archived pages of its website dated 2014.
A Shandong University news release revealed there had been a CAEP talent recruitment conference held at the university in 2015. It states the CAEP has “the main task of developing weapons, strategic hi-tech equipment and strategic science and technology”.
“After more than 50 years of development, it has achieved a series of milestones such as atomic bombs, hydrogen bombs and neutron bombs,” it states.
Mr Joske’s report states the CAEP is “responsible for research into and development and manufacturing of China’s nuclear weapons” and that “it’s also involved in developing lasers, directed-energy weapons and conventional weapons”.
Australian universities would have little idea if any of their academics were involved with the CAEP, or other similar overtly military organisations, via the Thousand Talents Plan.
New Zealand academic Anne-Marie Brady published a report last month titled China’s Exploitation of Civilian Channels for Military Purposes in New Zealand, which states that “hundreds of thousands” of Chinese scientists have been sent abroad to acquire the latest military-related technology.
She writes that it amounts to countries like New Zealand and Australia “subsidising China’s military modernisation”.
“It is shameful that the research of some of our researchers may be used to help improve the Chinese government’s repressive policies in Xinjiang and elsewhere,” she writes.
Matthew Henderson — a former British diplomat who served in Hong Kong and China — said China was effectively outsourcing research to Australia, the UK and the US through the Thousand Talents Plan.
“It serves the dual purpose of modernising China’s military and is also commercially valuable,” he said.
“At the moment we are giving greater shelf life to the most appalling regime the world has ever known because the best of our abilities are being stolen from us or handed over on a silver platter.”
Professor Brady adds: “Until recently, PLA equipment was assessed as low-tech and lagging behind that of other major weapons-producing states. However, in the past 10 years, the PLA’s military modernisation program has accelerated (and) China now leads the world in a number of fields and is close to being on a par with the United States in some domains.”
She poses the question: “How can we stop companies and universities from being used to boost China’s military development?”
“The People’s Liberation Army’s rapid militarisation program is accelerating via an international technology transfer strategy, which includes academic exchanges, investment in foreign companies, espionage and hacking,” she writes.
China’s efforts, through recruitment programs such as Thousand Talents, along with espionage and hacking has already paid off.
