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By PIETER HAECK
with PHELIM KINE AND STUART LAU
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HELLO CHINA WATCHERS: This is Pieter Haeck, filling in for Stuart Lau, who’s on a well-deserved break. I monitor research and innovation policy in Brussels, which is exactly what we will discuss today. Phelim Kine is with you from Washington on Thursday.
EU-CHINESE ACADEMIA COLLABORATIONS
EU STILL WORKS WITH CHINESE MILITARY-LINKED UNIVERSITIES: Brussels is abuzz with talk lately about how to shield European universities and researchers from Chinese interference.
But European universities still team up with a group of seven Chinese universities known as the “Seven Sons of National Defence” because of their contributions to China’s defence industry, a POLITICO analysis of a database of EU-funded research shows.
National defense role: Experts say working with these universities could entail risks since they’re close to the Chinese military.
The Seven Sons are under the management of China’s Industry and Information Technology Ministry and “play an important part in the Chinese defence industry,” according to a recent study by Datenna, a data intelligence platform focused on China, shared with China Watcher.
Decarbonization: This March, five European universities kicked off an EU-funded project on decarbonization. One of the project partners is the Beijing Institute of Technology, a member of the “Seven Sons” club.
It was not a one-time thing. The bloc’s flagship R&D program, Horizon Europe, also funds a project on heat transfer technology, which has Beihang University as a partner — also one of the group of seven — and runs until 2027. Horizon Europe’s predecessor, Horizon 2020, has at least seven other ongoing projects with Seven Sons members.
Datenna’s own research found that in a dataset of 379 collaborations between European and Chinese universities, about one-fifth had one of the Seven Sons as a partner.
“Very high” risk: Both Beijing Institute of Technology and Beihang University are categorised as “very high” risk partners by the China Defence Universities tracker of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, a widely used instrument by universities to decide on research collaborations.
Risk assessment: Some of the European universities involved say they are well aware of the risk but decided to proceed as the research project’s topic isn’t that controversial.
The University of Groningen, which coordinates the decarbonization project, said that the Seven Sons are “in any case” a high-risk partner. For that reason, the university’s research security team reviewed the project to check whether there was any risk of the results being misused.
“The research topic is as such that we didn’t see a risk of misuse for military or other unwanted goals,” the university said in a statement shared with China Watcher. Another partner, the University of Zaragoza, shared a similar statement.
The Brussels take: It echoes the European Commission’s own position, which made clear that research can take place under certain circumstances.
“I would see our relationship with a more pragmatic eye, because in other areas, we can be partners, such as agriculture, food, climate change,” the bloc’s Innovation chief Iliana Ivanova told POLITICO last year when asked about research ties with China. The European Commission declined any comment this time when asked about collaborations with the Seven Sons.
But but but: Some countries or regions in Europe are not so sure and have ruled out working with the group of seven altogether.
“New collaborations with the Chinese ‘Seven Sons of Defence’ are not going to be allowed anymore,” Jo Brouns, innovation minister in Belgium’s northern region of Flanders, said this January in a response to a local lawmaker.
RIVAL OR THREAT
CALL CHINA A THREAT FOR EUROPE, EX-TOP DIPLOMAT ARGUE: The man instrumental in coining the EU's "systemic rival" relationship with China now thinks EU leaders need to go beyond that and call Beijing out as "a threat to European security." Gunnar Wiegand, who retired last year as EEAS managing director for Asia-Pacific, argues in a new report that Western diplomatic efforts have failed to stop China from forming an alignment with Russia, and that will have a direct and lasting impact on Europe's security unseen in EU-China history.
"Europe and the United States cannot count on China to play a role in ending the war now and have to recognize that China is instead supporting Russia's war efforts," says the report, previewed by Stuart Lau.
Time for secondary sanctions: Europe should "[increase] the cost to China of exporting dual-use equipment to Russia" and do what it has argued against for years: Using U.S.-style secondary sanctions, according to the report by Wiegand, now with the German Marshall Fund, MERICS' Abigaël Vasselier, a former EEAS senior official on China and Georgia's ex-ambassador to the EU Natalie Sabanadze, now with Chatham House.
"The EU should … consider creating the possibility of imposing secondary sanctions against financial institutions in third countries that assist Russia in evading EU sanctions. This would mirror the new [Office of Foreign Assets Control] authority that enables the United States to place a foreign financial institution under sanctions because it is involved in the financing or the payment of trade transactions," according to the report.
And go tough on corporate aiding and abetting: All Chinese and Hong Kong companies should be slapped with EU restrictive measures if there's evidence showing sanction circumvention — and that covers not only transshipping of EU origin goods, but also "'backfilling' of EU export restrictions with indigenous goods and tech items," according to the proposal.
"This will not be easy," the report concedes, as "political leadership and courage will be needed" to overcome opposition from EU businesses "who are often driven by fear of retaliation."
Stop being naïve: The report quashes a conventional belief among many Europeans that the Moscow-Beijing goodwill wouldn't last long. It would "be unwise to dismiss the Russo-Chinese alignment as a temporary 'marriage of convenience'," the report says. "They are united in presenting a common challenge to the West to create a new global order."
HUNGARY’S SHOW OF SUPPORT
KEEP DOORS WITH CHINA OPEN, HUNGARY SAYS: It’s only a couple of days until Hungary takes over the rotating presidency of Council of the EU, putting it in charge of trying to steer EU deals and policymaking. Just ahead of the handover, Budapest gave a show of goodwill to China.
“It’s something important to avoid that Europe is closing the doors, we need to keep the doors open,” Bálint Ódor, Hungary’s ambassador to the EU said on Monday during a POLITICO event when asked about the European Commission’s proposed tariffs on electric vehicles.
TRANSLATING WASHINGTON
CAMPBELL WARNS ON CRISIS COMMUNICATIONS DEFICIT: Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell warned on Monday that inadequate U.S.-China military crisis communication systems could lead to "inadvertent escalation" in the Indo-Pacific. "It's critical to try to establish confidence-building and crisis mechanisms to deal with inadvertence and miscalculation, which I believe in the near term is the biggest risk that we face," Campbell said at a Council on Foreign Relations event. "We built some of these mechanisms before, but then in moments of crisis when we’ve sought to use them, phones rang in empty rooms without being picked up, mechanisms that were established were not fielded," Campbell said. U.S. efforts in that direction are moving slowly. A bilateral "crisis-communications working group" won't launch until later this year, the Pentagon said in a statement last month. And a meeting between Indo-Pacific Command chief Admiral Samuel Paparo, and his Chinese counterparts won't happen until "until next year at some point," Campbell said.
EMBASSY REBUKES U.S. NUKE ARSENAL CRITICISM: Biden administration concerns that the rapid growth in China's nuclear arsenal constitute a "nuclear threat" are misleading, the Chinese Embassy in Washington said in a statement Saturday. "When it comes to nuclear capability, China is far from being on par with the U.S. and Russia … China's nuclear policies are fair and well-justifiable," the statement said. That's an implicit rebuke of comments earlier this month by National Security Council senior director for Arms Control, Disarmament and Nonproliferation, Pranay Vaddi, who warned that China's growing nuclear weapons stockpile may require "an increase from current deployed numbers" of U.S. nuclear weapons. "China has been reluctant to have any discussion that would in any way suggest that they’re prepared to limit a dramatic increase in their nuclear arsenal, but it’s possible they may be prepared to talk about other [nuclear] issues," Deputy Secretary of State Campbell said Monday.
U.S. SEEKS U.N. ROLE FOR TAIWAN: The Biden administration and Taiwan's government are trying to restore some level of United Nations' representation for the self-governing island that it lost in 1971. U.S. and Taiwan officials met in Taipei on Friday to discuss "expanding Taiwan's meaningful participation in the United Nations system and other international fora… including at the World Health Organization and the International Civil Aviation Organization," the State Department said in a statement on Saturday. Beijing issued guidelines last week targeting so-called Taiwanese "separatists" that classify such discussions as a criminal offense. The guidelines consider "advocating for Taiwan’s entry into international organizations limited to sovereign states or engaging in official exchanges and military contacts abroad" as crimes, Chinese state media reported Friday.
BEIJING SANCTIONS LOCKHEED MARTIN EXECUTIVES: China's Foreign Ministry confirmed on Monday it has imposed sanctions against U.S. weapons manufacturer Lockheed Martin as a reprisal for U.S. arms sales to Taiwan. Those sales "undermine China's sovereignty and territorial integrity…[so] China took countermeasures against relevant company's entities and senior executives," said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning. Those execs include Lockheed chairman James Taiclet, chief operating officer Frank St. John and chief financial officer Jesus Malave, Chinese state media said Friday.
Thanks to: editors Christian Oliver and Laurens Cerulus, Stuart Lau and Barbara Moens.
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