GOP lawmakers call on Biden to end US-China scientific agreement

WASHINGTON – Four Republican members of Congress called on President Biden Wednesday to halt negotiations with Beijing to renew a scientific cooperation agreement that they say has “overwhelmingly benefitted China.”

In a letter to the White House, Reps. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.), Andy Barr (R-Ky.) and Sen. Pete Ricketts (R-Neb.) urged Biden not to renew the US-China Science and Technology Cooperation Agreement that encourages links between the two adversaries.

“We are gravely concerned that the STA is furthering the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) ambitions to supplant the United States as the world’s leading innovation powerhouse,” they wrote in the letter exclusively obtained by The Post. “It is clear that the benefits of scientific cooperation have overwhelmingly flowed one way.”

The agreement was first signed in 1979 by then-President Jimmy Carter, launching government-to-government collaborative research efforts in fields from physics and chemistry to earth sciences and industrial technology.

It continued under successive administrations, and the US is currently in talks to secure its renewal.

With the deal previously set to expire on Aug. 27, the Biden White House sought a six-month extension to “strengthen” the pact through additional negotiations with Beijing.

Four GOP members of Congress have signed a letter urging President Biden to not renew the US-China Science and Technology Cooperation Agreement.Photo by SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Image

“Dangerously, the CCP also routinely attempts to exploit civilian research and research partnerships for military purposes,” the Republicans wrote. “Meanwhile the CCP’s rampant, unlawful intellectual property theft is well documented and has reportedly cost the United States hundreds of billions per year.”

When the STA was first enacted, it was “the first major agreement between Washington and Beijing following diplomatic normalization,” the congressmen wrote in their letter.

But with tensions simmering between the US and China – two of the world’s foremost leaders in technological development – the lawmakers say continuing the exchange now would threaten national security.

“Broad-based cooperation with our top geopolitical competitor in a main area of competition is hard to justify – yet that is exactly what the Science and Technology Agreement endorses,” the congressmen wrote. “In the interest of transparency and national security, it is crucial that the American people and their representatives have a say in a matter of such significance.”

The congressmen have introduced their own legislation to prevent the US from renewing the agreement, but are now asking the Biden administration to cease its negotiations with China until the House and Senate can take up the matter.

“Given that Congress intends to legislate on this matter, we request that you pause negotiations until this work is complete,” they wrote.

Chinese scientists working in a lab at Beijing Huadu Yukou Poultry Industry Co., Ltd. on October 10, 2023. The agreement encourages cooperation between the US and China in a number of fields like chemistry and earth sciences.Photo by Ren Chao/Xinhua via Getty Images

“At a minimum, given the importance of this issue and the growing legislative attention, it is essential that elected representatives in Congress are provided the opportunity to thoroughly review and assess any negotiated text before an extension is signed,” they asked further.

The letter and accompanying legislation come after Gallagher and his House Select Committee on the CCP urged Secretary of State Antony Blinken in June not to renew the arrangement ahead of its then-impending August sunset.

“We are concerned that the [People’s Republic of China] has previously leveraged the [Science and Technology Agreement] to advance its military objectives and will continue to do so,” the committee wrote at the time. “Reports suggest that research partnerships organized under the STA could have developed technologies that would later be used against the United States.”

The Blinken letter came less than a week after the committee sent a separate letter to US Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines and Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo asking what they know about Beijing using US technology to spy on Americans from a surveillance facility in Cuba.