WASHINGTON – Four Republican members of Congress called on President Biden on Wednesday to halt negotiations with Beijing to renew a scientific cooperation agreement that they said has “provided enormous benefits to China.”
In a letter to the White House, Reps. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.), Andy Barr (R-Ky.) and Sen. Pete Ricketts (R-Neb.) urged Biden not to renew the US-China Science and Technology Cooperation Agreement which promotes relations between the two enemies.
“We are deeply concerned that STA is pursuing the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) ambition to replace the United States as the world’s leading innovation power,” they wrote in a letter obtained exclusively by The Post. “It is clear that the benefits of scientific collaboration have largely flowed in one direction.”
The agreement was first signed in 1979 by then-President Jimmy Carter, launching collaborative government-to-government research efforts in fields ranging from physics and chemistry to earth science and industrial technology.
It has continued under successive administrations, and the US is now in talks to seek its renewal.
With the agreement previously set to expire on August 27, the Biden White House requested a six-month extension to “strengthen” the pact through additional negotiations with Beijing.
Four GOP members of Congress have signed a letter urging President Biden not to renew the US-China Science and Technology Cooperation Agreement. Photo by SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images
“Dangerously, the CCP also routinely attempts to exploit public research and research partnerships for military purposes,” the Republican wrote. “Meanwhile, the CCP’s rampant and illegal theft of intellectual property is well documented and reportedly costs the United States hundreds of billions annually.”
When the STA was first drafted, it was “the first major agreement between Washington and Beijing following diplomatic normalization,” the congressmen wrote in their letter.
But with tensions rising between the US and China – two of the world’s foremost leaders in technological development – lawmakers say continuing the exchange now would threaten national security.
“Broad-based cooperation with our major geopolitical rivals in key areas of competition is difficult to justify — yet that’s what the Science and Technology Agreement supports,” the congressman wrote. “In the interest of transparency and national security, it is important that the American people and their representatives have a voice on such important matters.”
Congressmen have introduced their own legislation to prevent the US from renewing the deal, but are now asking the Biden administration to halt its negotiations with China until the House and Senate can take action.
“As Congress intends to legislate on this matter, we ask that you suspend negotiations until this work is completed,” they wrote.
Chinese scientists work in a laboratory in Beijing Huadu Yukou Poultry Industry Co., Ltd. on October 10, 2023. The agreement promotes cooperation between the US and China in a number of fields such as chemistry and earth science. Photo by Ren Chao/Xinhua via Getty Images
“At the very least, given the importance of this issue and the growing legislative attention, it is important that the representatives of the people in Congress be given the opportunity to thoroughly review and evaluate any negotiated text before the extension is signed,” they asked again.
The letter and accompanying legislation came after Gallagher and his House Select Committee on the CCP urged Secretary of State Antony Blinken in June not to renew the arrangement by the next August sunset.
“We are concerned that [People’s Republic of China] had previously taken advantage of [Science and Technology Agreement] to advance its military objectives and will continue to do so,” the committee wrote at the time. “Reports suggest that research partnerships organized under the STA could develop technologies that would later be used against the United States.”
Blinken’s letter came less than a week after the committee sent separate letters to US Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo asking what they knew about Beijing using US technology to spy on Americans from surveillance facilities in Cuba.
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
