The bill would prevent U.S. research from being shared with or conducted alongside Chinese entities tied to the CCP.
A Republican Senator is putting forth new legislation to ensure the Chinese military cannot get its hands on sensitive U.S. technology to further its military modernization goals.
Senator Jim Banks (R., Ind.) is introducing legislation Thursday to prevent federally funded U.S. research from being shared with or conducted alongside Chinese entities tied to the Chinese Communist Party’s civil-military fusion strategy, National Review has learned.
Banks’s Preventing PLA Acquisition of U.S. Technology Act would also prohibit U.S. research agencies and federally funded universities and private companies from participating in STEM research or tech exchanges with Chinese entities of concern for areas of cutting-edge technological innovation.
“The Chinese Communist Party has used our research and technology against us, strengthening their own military and preparing for war against America. My bill stops U.S. taxpayer dollars from arming the Chinese military and protects America’s technological edge,” Banks said in a statement to National Review.
China’s military, the People’s Liberation Army, has a civil-military fusion strategy, where it uses nominally private companies to further its military goals. One aspect of that strategy is stealing U.S. technology and transferring it to research institutions aligned with the PLA. Academic research partnerships in areas important to the Chinese military are a vehicle for these technology transfers.
A September 2024 report from the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party found that “hundreds of millions” worth of federal research funding contributed to Chinese “advancements in dual use, critical, and emerging technologies like hypersonic weapons, artificial intelligence, fourth generation nuclear weapons technology, and semiconductor technology.”
The House China Committee report was conducted with the House Education and Workforce Committee. It identifies close to 9,000 research publications funded by the Department of Defense or the intelligence community with co-authors affiliated with Chinese institutions. More than 2,000 of those publications featured authors with direct ties to China’s defense research industrial base. Many of the papers detailed advanced research into dual-use, critical, and emerging technologies, the report says.
In addition, the report presents six case studies showing how the Chinese Communist Party benefited from the federally funded research into innovative technologies, and it explains how China uses joint research institutes with U.S. universities to get their hands on American technology.
Then-Senator Marco Rubio (R., Fla.), now Secretary of State, introduced the Preventing PLA Acquisition of U.S. Technology Act last Congress, with support from a handful of GOP colleagues. As a House lawmaker, Banks introduced the companion version of the bill. Banks was previously a member of the China Committee and established himself as a leading China hawk.
Banks was easily elected to the Senate in 2024 and has already introduced several bills during his short Senate tenure to mitigate Chinese influence on American institutions and curtail rampant Chinese espionage.