Biden seeks short extension to key China science pact

The Biden administration is in search of a short-term extension to a landmark science and technology agreement with China despite pressure from some U.S. lawmakers who say Beijing could exploit it to achieve a security and military advantage.

A six-month extension to the Science and Technology Agreement, or STA, will keep the pact in force because the U.S. seeks “authority to undertake negotiations to amend and strengthen the terms,” a State Department spokesperson told NBC News on Wednesday.  

Signed in 1979 by President Jimmy Carter and Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping, the STA was the primary accord between the 2 countries after they normalized diplomatic relations. It has historically been renewed roughly every five years and was as a consequence of lapse this weekend.

A lapse within the pact wouldn’t only imperil government-to-government collaboration in vital areas reminiscent of climate change and public health, it might also inhibit academic cooperation between the world’s two leading economies, supporters have warned.

The STA serves because the umbrella agreement for the science and technology relationship between the U.S. and Chinese governments, said Deborah Seligsohn, an assistant political science professor at Villanova University.

“If it were to go away, not only wouldn’t it impede government-to-government cooperation, however it would also put other science cooperation in danger,” said Seligsohn, a former environment, science, technology and health counselor on the U.S. Embassy in Beijing.

China also considers it the enabling document for all other science cooperation with the U.S., including with academic and research institutions.

However the agreement’s renewal faced resistance from lawmakers who argue that collaboration on technologies in sensitive fields could advance China’s military modernization. In June, 10 Republican members of Congress sent a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken urging him to not renew.

“We’re clear-eyed to the challenges posed by the PRC’s national strategies on science and technology, Beijing’s actions on this space, and the threat they pose to U.S. national security and mental property and are dedicated to protecting the interests of the American people,” the State Department spokesperson said. 

Evidence suggests that China “will proceed to search for opportunities to take advantage of partnerships organized under the STA to advance its military objectives to the best extent possible and, in some cases, to try to undermine American sovereignty,” they wrote within the letter, whose signatories included Rep. Elise Stefanik of Recent York, the chair of the House Republican Conference, and Rep. Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin, the chair of the House select committee on China.

“The US must stop fueling its own destruction. Letting the STA expire is a superb first step,” they added.

In a separate letter to Blinken last week, Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., also objected to the agreement’s renewal, citing the Chinese government’s human rights violations, lack of transparency throughout the Covid-19 pandemic and “disregard for mental property rights.”

“Cooperation with a nation so contrary to American values is untenable,” he wrote.

The Biden administration’s plans aren’t unprecedented. Under former President Donald Trump, the U.S. sought an analogous short-term extension to renegotiate the terms of an annex of the agreement to strengthen mental property protections.

The State Department spokesperson said it was aware of the problems involved with working with China within the are of science and technology.

“We’re clear-eyed to the challenges posed by the PRC’s national strategies on science and technology, Beijing’s actions on this space, and the threat they pose to U.S. national security and mental property and are dedicated to protecting the interests of the American people,” they said, referring to the People’s Republic of China by its acronym.  

A number of the opposition to the agreement’s renewal also stems from the large strides China has made in science and technology because it was signed. Since 2019, Chinese researchers have published a greater proportion of the world’s top 1% most cited scientific papers than those from every other country, in response to Caroline Wagner of Ohio State University.

The Biden administration faces a difficult balancing act in its approach to China because it strives to safeguard U.S. national security without jeopardizing the general relationship. Last 12 months President Joe Biden announced a measure aimed toward cutting China off from advanced semiconductor chips, and this month he ordered restrictions on U.S. investment in high-tech industries in China reminiscent of semiconductors, artificial intelligence and quantum computing.

However the White House has also tried to scale back tensions with Beijing over issues reminiscent of trade, human rights and the status of Taiwan, sending a series of senior U.S. officials to China in recent months, including Blinken, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, U.S. climate envoy John Kerry and, next week, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo.

Chinese officials had indicated that they would love to see the STA renewed. Speaking on the Aspen Security Forum last month, China’s ambassador to the USA, Xie Feng, said renewing the agreement was a small but concrete option to start improving relations between the 2 countries.

The agreement plays an “irreplaceable” role in promoting scientific and technological cooperation and exchanges, said Wu Xinbo, director of the Center for American Studies at Fudan University in Shanghai.

Not renewing it, he said, would suggest the U.S. “is indeed launching a recent Cold War against China.”

U.S.-China cooperation in science and technology has been “mutually helpful” and the agreement needs to be renewed, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said in an announcement on Wednesday.

Allowing the agreement to lapse would signal to Chinese officials that the U.S. is less involved in “de-risking” the connection than “real decoupling of the whole lot,” said Seligsohn, who recently returned from a visit to China.

As well as, she said, it might further alienate Chinese scientists and graduate students, growing numbers of whom have already been leaving the U.S. after years of government prosecutions of Chinese academics accused of espionage that upended lives and careers but mostly got here up empty.

“If we fail to renew this agreement, it really sends a message to those young scientists and potential scientists — the brains of the long run — that the U.S. will not be involved in working in them,” she said.

Supporters of the agreement point to quite a few instances of U.S.-China collaboration which have improved the lives of Americans.

It was a large-scale study in China, for instance, that exposed the crucial role of folic acid supplements in reducing the chance of spina bifida and other neural tube defects, which women today are encouraged to take well before they turn out to be pregnant.

With the assistance of the Environmental Protection Agency, China has greatly reduced local air pollution, much of which was blowing across the Pacific and blanketing the West Coast.

Enhanced influenza surveillance in China, made possible by support from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has also informed the event of annual flu vaccines around the globe in what Seligsohn called a “huge success story.”