Republican senators demand an end to science and tech cooperation with China

WASHINGTON (AP) — A group of Republican senators is demanding that the Biden administration revoke a science and technology agreement with China, barely a week after the two countries renewed cooperation for five more years to keep ties from deteriorating.

In a letter Thursday to Secretary of State Antony Blinken, the lawmakers, led by Sen. Jim Risch, the ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the era in which such cooperation made sense “is long gone" and the extension only “opens the door for further cooptation of American research.”

The renewal of the agreement just before President Joe Biden leaves office “denies the incoming administration a chance to weigh in on this highly controversial agreement," they said, urging the administration to “reverse course.”

In addition to Risch, the letter was signed by Sens. John Barrasso, Pete Ricketts, Todd Young and Bill Hagerty.

The first such agreement was signed in January 1979 when the two countries established diplomatic ties to counter the influence of the Soviet Union and when China severely lagged behind the U.S. and other Western nations in science and technology.

The agreement was extended in 2018, and it was given temporary extensions last year and this year to allow for negotiations as the tech war between the two countries has escalated.

The State Department has said the new agreement has a narrower scope and more guardrails to protect U.S. interests, including covering only basic research and not facilitating the development of critical and emerging technologies.

The Republican senators said they had “deep concerns” that those measures were not sufficient to protect intellectual property and prevent illicit transfer of knowledge.

The State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the letter Thursday.

Deborah Seligsohn, assistant professor of political science at Villanova University, said the U.S. stands to lose more if it cuts off science and technology cooperation with Beijing.

“The irony is that as China has become our peer, we have so much more to gain from working with Chinese science than we did in earlier eras, and yet at this moment, when we have the most to gain, there is a demand that we shut the door,” she said.