Australia’s research collaboration activity with China is in freefall, with government funding for partnerships plummeting after allegations of foreign interference and intellectual property theft.
Analysis of the drop found that while there is a legitimate foreign interference threat in some areas, the response in Australia has been too blunt.
An expert is now arguing for clearer and more targeted limitations to correct the current “self-censorship” of applicants after years of scrutiny.
The University of Technology Sydney’s Australia-China Relations Institute examined recent funding approvals by the Australian Research Council after what had appeared to be a drop in support for projects involving research collaboration with partners in China.
Analysis of three of the ARC’s main grant schemes over the last five years confirmed a sharp decline in the funding relative to other international partners.
Grants involving collaboration with Chinese researchers as a share of all grants halved over the three years to seven per cent.
It comes despite China being the global leader in research impact. The Australian government is now funding more collaboration with New Zealand, which ranks 43rd.
“This is a very significant shift in government support and potentially with serious consequences if we’re not incentivising collaboration with the world’s leading knowledge creators,” the study’s author, Professor James Laurenceson told InnovationAus.com.
The analysis showed Australia’s top research universities received funding for an average of only five projects involving Chinese partners last year, plunging from 14 in 2019.
China is among the global leaders in key disciplines like material science and well ahead of Australia in several strategically important areas of research.
In 2020 then-Education minister Dan Tehan refused approval of five applicants to ARC grant programs on national security grounds after The Australian published claims local academics were giving the Chinese Communist Party access to their technology and inventions.
While no research projects have been vetoed by the current Education minister Jason Clare, years of scrutiny and a reputational risk have created a disincentive for Australian researchers to seek the partnerships in the first place.
Professor Laurenceson said the current decline in funding reflects a bottom-up process where universities and researchers have got the Australian government’s message to avoid partnering with China.
“It’s very hard to get an ARC grant right,” he said.
“You’ve got to put in an awful amount of time, your chances are small. So given all that background it doesn’t always seem surprising at all. Universities are saying, ‘now you know what, we might just pre-emptively self censor here and not go down that route’.”
There are legitimate national interest reasons for scrutinising and limiting research collaboration with China in certain areas, according to Professor Laurenceson, who was part of the establishment of the University Foreign Interference Taskforce established in 2019.
But the current blanket response can do more harm than good in certain fields like artificial intelligence and material science that cut across several disciplines, he said.
“If we’re going to assume that we can’t work with China in those sorts of broad categories then we’re going to be doing a whole lot of shooting ourselves in the foot. Because in those areas, China actually is a global leader.”
Professor Laurenceson would like to see very specific boundaries for research collaboration rather than leaving grant applicants to “read the tea leaves”. Encouragement from government to collaborate in the less sensitive areas would also help.
“I think you do need that proactive statement from the government to overcome the self-censorship that’s been taking place,” he said.
In the last year the ARC took an unprecedented step in managing foreign interference risks, standing down at least two researchers and banning them from future grants for failing to declare a potential conflict of interest.
