Alberta rewriting rules to safeguard university research with China, other countries

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The Alberta government, which has a freeze on new partnerships between its universities and China, is hiring a former Canadian diplomat to draw up new rules for all foreign collaborations by the province’s postsecondary institutions.

The province has tapped Gordon Houlden, whose foreign service career included postings in Beijing and Hong Kong and who also served as executive director of the University of Alberta’s China Institute think tank, to come up with recommendations by early 2023.

Mr. Houlden will provide advice on “an approach to postsecondary international relationships that balances innovation and competitiveness with risk mitigation,” the Alberta government said.

Through their international connections, Alberta’s universities generate innovation and prosperity, Mr. Houlden said. “But their research warrants protection from those who would take advantage of Alberta’s openness to the world.”

Nearly 17 months ago, Alberta ordered its major universities to suspend the pursuit of partnerships with Chinese state entities, citing concerns over national security and the risk that the research could be used to facilitate human-rights abuses. The order affected the University of Alberta, the University of Calgary, the University of Lethbridge and Athabasca University, institutions with a strong research focus.

Western countries have grown increasingly concerned about China’s efforts to scour the world for technology with both civilian and military value – what Richard Fisher, the senior fellow on Asian military affairs at the U.S.-based International Assessment and Strategy Center think tank, has called a global “intelligence vacuum cleaner.”

On Tuesday, British spy chief Jeremy Fleming warned in a speech that China’s leadership is using its financial and scientific muscle in a bid to dominate strategically important technologies, from digital currencies to satellite technology. Sir Fleming, the head of Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters, said the Chinese Communist Party is wielding science and tech advancements as a “tool to gain advantage through control of their markets, of those in their sphere of influence and of their own.

“They see nations as either potential adversaries or potential client states, to be threatened, bribed or coerced,” Sir Fleming said.

Margaret McCuaig-Johnston, a former senior official at the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council whose career included serving on the Canada-China Joint Committee on Science and Technology Co-operation, said she thinks there should be one set of rules for academic co-operation with authoritarian regimes such as China and Russia – and a different set for other countries.

“Collaboration would be very different with the U.S. than it would be for China or Russia,” said Ms. McCuaig-Johnston who in 2020 wrote a paper for the University of Alberta’s China Institute warning about the pitfalls of getting involved in joint ventures with Chinese companies or educational institutions.

She said a major red flag for Canadian university researchers should be whether their potential partner is doing work with the Chinese military. The enticement of civilian researchers in China to collaborate with the military – what’s been called “military-civil fusion” under President Xi Jinping – means Canadian universities need to be wary of research work that could be hijacked by Beijing.

In a 2018 paper, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, a think tank, identified 84 publications on scientific research arising from collaboration between Canadian scientists and Chinese military researchers in 2017, and 106 in 2016.

“We need to ensure our researchers can work with counterparts around the world in the safest way possible,” Demetrios Nicolaides, Alberta’s Advanced Education Minister, said in a statement about Mr. Houlden’s hiring.

Samuel Blackett, press secretary to Mr. Nicolaides, said Mr. Houlden’s report would not be made public as it relates to national security.

In the meantime, Alberta’s four major research-focused universities are still prohibited from signing new agreements with China for graduate student research and participation in study or research programs that are potentially related to national and economic security for the country and the province. The prohibition applies primarily to doctoral and post-doctoral research.

These universities are also still prohibited from signing new agreements with China involving visiting researchers or post-doctoral fellows, as well as arrangements for research commercialization, technology transfers and intellectual property.