Congressional lawmakers are urging the White House not to renew a U.S.-China science and technology cooperation agreement amid concerns about Beijing's intentions.
Members of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party sent a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Tuesday, asking that the Biden administration not renew the "Agreement Between the United States and the People's Republic of China on Cooperation in Science and Technology."
"We are concerned that the [People's Republic of China] has previously leveraged the [Science and Technology Agreement] to advance its military objectives and will continue to do so," the committee members wrote. "Reports suggest that research partnerships organized under the STA could have developed technologies that would later be used against the United States."
The letter's signatories suggest that the Chinese spy balloon that traversed the U.S, this year might have meteorological research technology that was developed under the pact.
"In 2018, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) organized a project with China's Meteorological Administration – under the STA – to launch instrumented balloons to study the atmosphere," the letter read. "As you know, a few years later, the PRC [People's Republic of China] used similar balloon technology to surveil US military sites on US territory – a clear violation of our sovereignty."
First signed in 1979 by President Jimmy Carter, the agreement, set to expire Aug. 27, launched collaborative research efforts between the U.S. and Chinese governments in fields ranging from chemistry and physics to industrial technology and earth sciences.
Committee Chairman Rep. Mike Gallagher, R-Wis., told the New York Post that, despite subsequent U.S. administrations extending it, the time has come to let the "outdated" agreement expire due to the current frayed relationship between Washington and Beijing.
"For years, thanks to its strategy of military-civil fusion, the Chinese Communist Party has abused the openness of the American scientific community to steal American research and co-opt it for its own malign purposes, including to surveil the Chinese public and strengthen its military-industrial complex," Gallagher said. "Extending the Science and Technology Agreement between the U.S. and China would only further jeopardize our research and intellectual property."
Collaboration under the agreement is not meant to further military development, but the committee members said that China "will exploit civilian research partnerships for military purposes to the greatest extent possible."
Beijing makes no secret about its practice of "military-civil fusion," the letter states, noting that the State Department defines military-civil fusion as "the elimination of barriers between the PRC's civilian research and commercial sector, and its military and defense industrial sectors."
"The PRC uses academic researchers, industrial espionage, forced technology transfers and other tactics to gain an edge in critical technologies, which in turn fuels the People's Liberation Army modernization," the members wrote.
Pointing to "over a dozen active research projects" the U.S. Department of Agriculture has with PRC entities, the lawmakers said that they have seen "very concerning reports regarding collaboration in sensitive agricultural technologies."
"The United States must stop fueling its own destruction," they said. "Letting the STA expire is a good first step."