Tsinghua-Berkeley Shenzhen Institute (TBSI), based in the heart of China’s Silicon Valley, was born a little over a decade ago to “promote a new level of education internationalization,” a University of California, Berkeley, official said at the time.
But some lawmakers see Berkeley’s partnership with Tsinghua University as little more than a nefarious opportunity for China to build its research capacity and develop its military capabilities with the help of American researchers and tax dollars.
“We’re funding this research, these joint institutes that provided a perfect vehicle for China to steal and access critical American scientific knowledge,” John Moolenaar, the Republican congressman from Michigan who is chairman of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), told me as he leaned back in the leather chair in his Capitol Hill office.
In a series of reports published over the last year, the House committee said that TBSI collaborated on research with Chinese companies sanctioned by the United States, including telecommunications giants Huawei and ZTE, genomics company BGI, and drone maker DJI. TBSI researchers also collaborated on hundreds of papers with researchers at Chinese universities that have ties to the People’s Liberation Army. Some of the research papers have direct military applications, including for “infrared target detection” and an “underwater wireless sensor network.”
