Eastern Michigan University to cut ties with Chinese colleges amid lawmaker push

Dive Brief: 

• Eastern Michigan University is ending engineering teaching partnerships with two Chinese universities after a pair of prominent Republican lawmakers raised national security concerns. 
• The university announced Wednesday it is terminating its partnership with Guangxi University and Beibu Gulf University. Eastern Michigan President James Smith said the university is working with Beibu Gulf to ensure affected students can complete their studies elsewhere. The Guangxi partnership did not enroll any students.
• The move comes as Republican lawmakers increasingly raise research theft concerns about colleges’ partnerships with Chinese universities. The Trump administration is also moving to “aggressively revoke” the visas of international students from China, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said this week. 

Dive Insight: 

In February, two high-profile lawmakers from Michigan — Rep. Tim Walberg, the chair of the House’s education committee, and Rep. John Moolenaar, the chair of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party — called on Eastern Michigan and two other universities in their state to end their partnerships with Chinese colleges. 

“The university’s [People’s Republic of China] collaborations jeopardize the integrity of U.S. research, risk the exploitation of sensitive technologies, and undermine taxpayer investments intended to strengthen America’s technological and defense capabilities,” the letter stated. 

Shortly afterward, Oakland University said it would end its partnerships with three Chinese universities. The University of Detroit Mercy, the third institution that received a letter in February, is likewise ending its teaching partnerships with Chinese universities. 

University of Detroit Mercy President Donald Taylor said in a Friday statement that the institution is working to ensure students can finish their studies. He also noted that the partnerships have not included any research or technology transfer. 

“They are solely for undergraduate teaching programs only with course content that is available publicly,” Taylor said.

In Eastern Michigan’s Wednesday announcement, Smith stressed that both partnerships had been exclusively focused on teaching and did not involve research or the transfer of technology. He added that the programs did not encompass cybersecurity teaching. 

“The course content for all offered classes is widely available in the public domain,” Smith said. 

In October, Moolenaar also urged the University of Michigan to end its two-decade partnership with Shanghai Jiao Tong University on a joint institute. Moolenaar alleged the partnership had helped the Chinese government advance their defense technologies, from rocket fuel research to improving imaging to detect flaws in military equipment. 

The University of Michigan announced in January it would end academic collaboration with Shanghai Jiao Tong and ensure students enrolled in the joint institute’s programs would be able to complete their degrees. 

Last year, the Georgia Institute of Technology also announced it would pull out of a partnership that established an overseas campus in China, while the University of California, Berkeley recently severed ties with Tsinghua University following a House report raising concerns with colleges’ partnerships with Chinese institutions. 

The Trump administration recently opened an investigation into UC Berkeley over its partnership with Tsinghua University, alleging that it failed to properly report its foreign gifts and contracts. 

Earlier this month, two House committees set their sights on Harvard University’s ties with China, arguing that some of its partnerships “raise serious national security and ethnical concerns.” Lawmakers demanded the Ivy League institution hand over internal documents related to its partnerships with China and certain other countries by June 2. 

The Trump administration is also planning a crackdown on international students from China, citing national security concerns. Rubio said Wednesday that the federal government will revoke visas from Chinese students “with connections to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in critical fields,” though he didn’t specify what those disciplines would be.