Biden administration extends U.S.-China tech settlement days earlier than leaving workplace

The Biden administration in its final days has renewed a controversial science and technology cooperation agreement with China, despite critics’ complaints of Beijing’s theft of American technology and ongoing damaging state-linked hacking operations.

The State Department announced Friday the 1979 agreement that had lapsed last summer has been extended for five years.

The extension in a protocol includes strengthened protections for intellectual property and creates new guardrails for protecting researchers, the department said in a brief statement. The accord “advances U.S. interests through newly established and strengthened provisions on transparency and data reciprocity,” the State Department said.

China’s government hailed the renewal of the science agreement as a step toward improved relations overall.

Extending the agreement “will advance technological progress in both nations, drive socio-economic development, enhance collaboration on global challenges, and improve the well-being of people worldwide,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said on Monday, according to a report in the state-controlled Global Times.

But on Capitol Hill, Rep. John Moolenaar, chairman of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, and several other House members condemned the action. The committee had called for ending the agreement over concerns that cooperating on science and technology issues was bolstering the Chinese military.

Mr. Moolenaar, Michigan Republican, and 13 other House members said renewing the agreement in the final days of President Biden’s term is a “clear attempt to tie the hands” of the incoming Trump administration, which could reject the agreement or negotiate a better arrangement.

“We urge you to immediately suspend efforts to renew the U.S.-PRC STA prior to January 20, 2025,” the lawmakers stated in a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken, using the acronym for Science and Technology Agreement.

A 2018 White House report on Chinese technology theft estimated Beijing’s theft of technology costs American companies between $225 billion and $600 billion annually. Former National Security Agency Director Keith Alexander has described Chinese theft of technology from the United States as “the greatest transfer of wealth in human history.”

Security officials recently said Chinese intelligence-linked hackers have broken into computer networks of U.S. telecommunications firms and critical infrastructure networks for both spying and future sabotage.

The House recently passed legislation that would require any extension of the science and technology agreement with China to include 15 days’ advance notice to Congress and to include explicit protections for human rights and curbs on dual civilian-military research.

“While not yet law, the Biden Administration’s decision to ignore Congress’s articulated guardrails is alarming,” the committee said in a statement.

The amended accord is said to ensure that any federal science and technology cooperation with China benefits the United States and “minimizes” risks to U.S. national security, the State Department said. The new agreement is also limited to “basic research” and does not facilitate development of critical or emerging technology.

The Bureau of Oceans and Environmental and Scientific Affairs declined to provide The Washington Times with a copy of the agreement. A spokesman said the accord will eventually be published on the department website.

The State Department in announcing the agreement said its extension is part of the Biden administration policy of “responsibly managing” strategic competition with China and followed extensive consultations and months of negotiation.

The agreement expired Aug. 27 after the pact had been limited by an earlier six-month extension imposed amid mounting U.S.-China tensions.

A Congressional Research Service report said Chinese cooperation under the agreement has been inconsistent and that Beijing had restricted U.S. researchers’ access in certain areas.

Critics in Congress view China as “an unreliable or untrustworthy research partner, citing data restrictions and a lack of forthrightness in sharing scientific results,” the report said.

For example, China cut off access to U.S.-funded coronavirus work at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in 2019. A potential leak of a deadly virus from the institute is considered by some intelligence agencies to have been the source for the COVID-19 pandemic.

The House select committee also has produced a recent report highlighting how federal research funding helped advance Chinese military-related technology in areas such as hypersonic and nuclear weapons, artificial intelligence and semiconductors.

Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio, President-elect Trump’s nominee for secretary of state, has said he opposes the accord and warned that any agreement with a communist regime that spies on the United States and steals intellectual property “is a horrible idea.”

Miles Yu, a former State Department policymaker, said the agreement should be canceled, saying it reflected a faulty U.S. strategy of engagement with Beijing.

“That engagement strategy has been thoroughly discredited, with a bipartisan consensus, as it has empowered [China] to become the leading tormentor of its enabler, the United States,” said Mr. Yu, now with the Hudson Institute’s China Center.

But Roger Pielke, a researcher with the American Enterprise Institute, has said he favors continuing the agreement as the cooperation could be beneficial for the U.S.

The CRS report said state control in China “has allowed the [People’s Republic of China] to shape [science and technology] ties with the United States to fill research gaps, develop competencies and [intellectual property] in priority areas targeted in its industrial policies, and develop PRC talent,” Mr. Pielke said.