Most Chinese academics say security concerns affecting research

Australian academics of Chinese heritage support measures to boost the security of university research but are worried about how it is being done, a survey has found.

Respondents say the cure for universities’ national security vulnerabilities may be worse than the disease, with collaboration in and of itself – rather than the specifics of the partnership – arousing suspicion.

Almost three-quarters of respondents said this had affected their research, with close to half saying the impacts had been significant. Nearly three in five said they had avoided, changed, delayed or ended China-related collaboration because of research security policies.

The survey by the Australia-China Relations Institute at the University of Technology Sydney drew responses from over 100 Chinese Australian academics who had worked at universities Down Under during the past five years. Over nine in 10 had been born in China and were now Australian citizens or permanent residents.

Many said they now chose their research topics, co-authors and PhD co-supervisors more carefully and were less likely to add their names to grant applications.

Compared with five years earlier, the proportion of Chinese-heritage academics involved in co-supervision had fallen by around one-fifth. One-quarter fewer were taking part in joint research projects, and one-third fewer were contributing to joint grant applications.

Fifty-two per cent said they felt uncomfortable discussing China-related collaborations within their universities, and 55 per cent suspected that their ethnicity influenced colleagues’ perceptions of their desirability as research partners.

The findings suggest that a general air of suspicion – rather than case-by-case judgement of risk – characterises the sector’s management of national security. Report co-author Wanning Sun said universities’ approach to research security was “kind of interpretive”.

Occasional instructions received from security agencies on a “need-to-know” basis and shared with colleagues “verbally” – never in writing – conveyed an impression that collaboration with China-based researchers would “cruel your chances” of funding, she said.

“They don’t even necessarily mention China,” Sun said. “The university [is] second-guessing the government, the faculty is second-guessing the university and…the individual academics of course are second-guessing as well. If you leave it to individuals to work out which [topic] is sensitive to national security, they just say, ‘I’m not in a position to find out. Nobody gives me clear answers so I’ll just take a conservative approach and I won’t bother.’”

The findings could have major implications for the sector, given China’s significance as a research partner. China-based collaborators have been involved in over half of Australia’s most cited science, technology, engineering and maths research publications since 2020, the survey report says.

And while data are hard to come by, people of Chinese heritage comprise a significant proportion of Australia’s academic workforce. Sun said around one-quarter of the recipients of this year’s Australian Research Council Future Fellowships, for instance, had Chinese-sounding names.

Almost one-quarter of respondents reported “uncertainty” about continuing their academic careers in Australia, the survey found, although research security concerns “were generally one factor among several”.

The study included qualitative interviews with 12 senior Chinese-Australian scientists. Sun, who conducted the interviews, said most came across as “timid” and “nerdy” scientists who knew little about politics and “don’t really want to get involved”.

One interviewee, a professor in photonics, said this was part of the problem. “We came here full of enthusiasm, wanting to give something back. We’ve made contributions to this country. Why do we face this kind of discrimination after contributing so much? Maybe we’ve just been too quiet. Even when we’re treated unfairly, we don’t speak up.”

The survey found that co-authorship and “informal” scholarly exchange had proven “broadly stable” compared with more structured forms of collaboration, such as joint grants, co-supervision and infrastructure sharing. But informal links could also come under threat, now that recent amendments to the Foreign Relations Act require universities to disclose projects organised at “researcher-to-researcher level”.

Nineteen per cent of respondents disagreed that Australia needed policies to manage national security risks in international research collaboration, while another 18 per cent had no view on the matter. Sun said this probably reflected disillusionment with the way Australia handled research security rather than scepticism of the need to do so.

john.ross@timeshighereducation.com