Chinese Espionage

US lawmakers target Chinese student-spies
Restrictions planned on access to sensitive research and funding from China
Reuters

Chinese spies in American campus

Chinese students and scholars will find it harder to work in the United States if US lawmakers succeed in passing legislation aimed at securing sensitive information.
The members of Congress are writing bills that would require more reporting from colleges, universities and laboratories about funds from China, prohibit students or scholars with ties to the Chinese military from entering the United States, or set new limits on access to sensitive academic research.
Failure to comply could mean financial hardship.
The proposed bills add to growing pressure against Chinese students, researchers, companies and other organisations in the United States.
Amid an escalating trade war between China and the US, members of Congress have become increasingly concerned the thousands of Chinese students, professors and researchers in the US could pose a security threat by carrying sensitive information back to China.
Republican Senator John Cornyn said on Wednesday that he hoped to win bipartisan support for the Secure our Research Act, a bill he planned to introduce next week to prompt US institutions to do more to protect valuable research.

“We are under attack,” Cornyn said at a Senate Finance Committee hearing examining foreign threats to US research. “[China’s] goals are to dominate the United States military and economically.”
Cornyn, who is also a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, called US academia “naive” about the threat from China. 

He warned that he would not vote for any plan to give taxpayer dollars to public institutions unless they improved security.

Republican Senator John Cornyn of Texas is hoping to win bipartisan support for a bill aimed at prompting US institutions to do more to protect research. 

Many of the individual bills face little chance of passing despite growing bipartisan concern in Congress over security risks from China.
While President Trump and many other Republicans want stricter controls on immigration as well as a hard line on China, pro-China Democrats, who control the House of Representatives, warn about the risks of making Chinese feel unwelcome.
Lawmakers from both parties, as well as university officials, point to the multimillion-dollar contribution to the US economy from the 350,000 Chinese who come for undergraduate or graduate studies.
However, small pieces of the measures could make their way into broader, must-pass bills, like the massive annual National Defence Authorisation Act, which is making its way through Congress.
Republican Senator Ted Cruz and Republican Representative Francis Rooney marked the 30th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown on Tuesday by reintroducing the Stop Higher Education Espionage and Theft (SHEET) Act, intended to prevent Chinese espionage efforts at US universities.