Should Europe share US and Australian fears about academic partnerships with China?
- Reported Irish-Chinese research collaborations highlight greater openness to such connections in Europe, where governments have yet to intervene
The scrutiny started in the United States and is well under way in Australia. Now concerns are growing in Europe about the links between education institutions there and partners in China.
For example, a report earlier this month in British newspaper The Sunday Times raised questions about ties between a number of leading Irish universities and Chinese colleges accused of espionage and cyberattacks.
The concerns in all countries are broad – ranging from IP theft to military applications of civilian research – but observers say there is a big difference in the way authorities have responded.
Frank Pieke, director of the Mercator Institute for China Studies in Berlin, said it was clear China was dedicating its resources in Europe toward research that was strategically valuable to the state but until very recently, “nobody [in Europe] really knew much or cared much about any of the possible risks that collaboration with Chinese partners would or could entail”.
“People were of the view that working with a Chinese partner was for the betterment of science, and concerns about the loss of intellectual property were really few and far between, if they existed at all,” Pieke said.
That lack of concern about IP losses was reflected in research by the Netherlands’ Leiden Asia Centre which found that “no overt evidence of actual theft of intellectual property” or “explicit or overt foul play” in European institutions of higher education, Pieke, who was involved in the study, said.
