Republicans in the US House of Representatives are escalating their targeting of US-China joint institutes and degree programmes, identifying dozens of such partnerships as “high-risk” for the first time in a report released on Friday.
In a 39-page report, the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party and the House Committee on Education and the Workforce argued that joint degree programmes – particularly those in science and technology – provided China “sustained access to US expertise” and that joint institutes operate “under the thumb of the [Chinese Communist Party]”.
In total, the committees name about 50 ongoing partnerships, including a physics institute between New York University and East China Normal University; a public health doctorate programme between Johns Hopkins University and Tsinghua University; an MBA programme between the University of Minnesota and Sun Yat-sen University; and a master’s in bioengineering offered jointly by Beijing University of Chemical Technology and the University of Georgia.
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“These partnerships must end,” said congressman John Moolenaar of Michigan, the chair of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, in a social media video on Friday.
Friday’s move is the latest step in House Republicans’ campaign to curb US-China academic partnerships amid concern that they could advance Beijing’s military and technological modernisation.
Factors the committees say render a partnership “high-risk” include having links to any of China’s so-called “seven sons of national defence”, hosting military-focused entities, or having ties to defence or intelligence end-uses.
Beijing, for its part, has previously said that cooperation in science and technology with the US was “mutually beneficial”. In recent years, it has been encouraging more Americans to study in China, following the goal set by Chinese President Xi Jinping at a 2023 summit in San Francisco to have 50,000 young Americans visit the country over five years.
China’s embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump last month said he would allow 600,000 Chinese students to America, more than double current numbers.
Yet Republican pressure at the national and state levels in recent years has led to the shuttering of several partnerships – some of them unrelated to science and technology – that brought Chinese students to US campuses.
These ranged from partnerships with US research powerhouses such as the University of Michigan and Dartmouth to those with less research-focused institutions like Florida International University and the University of Detroit Mercy.
Earlier this year, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that his department would “aggressively” revoke the visas of Chinese students with ties to China’s Communist Party and in “critical fields”.
Still, some US universities have chosen to keep their Chinese partnerships despite the pressure – a fact that the House committees took issue with in their report.
Among them is Duke University, which came under US congressional scrutiny in May for its joint campus with Wuhan University amid concerns that it may facilitate the transfer of technology to China and shape the views of American students in line with Beijing’s.
On Wednesday, as part of a broader annual defence authorisation bill, the House passed a measure that would prohibit federal science and technology funding to researchers that collaborate with Chinese entities that “pose a national security risk”.
That bill, which would also require enhanced disclosures from federal researchers of their links to Chinese entities, would still need to reconcile with the Senate’s version before it can become law.
This article originally appeared in the South China Morning Post (SCMP), the most authoritative voice reporting on China and Asia for more than a century. For more SCMP stories, please explore the SCMP app or visit the SCMP’s Facebook and Twitter pages. Copyright © 2025 South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.
Copyright (c) 2025. South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.
