University of New Haven Should End Partnership with Xi’an University Over Ties to China’s Military
Chairman John Moolenaar of the Select Committee on China is calling on the University of New Haven (UNH) to end its partnership with Xi’an University. In a letter to UNH President Jens Frederiksen, Moolenaar details the alarming ties between UNH's Tagliatela College of Engineering and Xi'an. Of particular concern is that UNH has been designated a National Security Agency (NSA) Center of Academic Excellence in Cyber Operations since 2019, and its Tagliatela College of Engineering received an NSA National Centers of Academic Excellence in Cybersecurity grant.
In the letter, Moolenaar writes:
"Accordingly, UNH is not merely participating in a traditional student-exchange arrangement. It is providing American university curriculum and faculty instruction in advanced technology disciplines through a jointly operated school located on the campus of a PRC university that publicly describes its activities as serving Chinese national strategies and development priorities.
...
XUPT’s College of Communications and Information Engineering, where the UNH-XUPT joint school resides, openly promotes its support for China’s “military-civil fusion” (军民融合) strategy, with related innovations showcased at national conferences. The College also promotes its relationship with the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) National University of Defense Technology (NUDT) and the BeiDou Open Laboratory Xi’an Branch. At one jointly organized event, BeiDou Open Laboratory provided XUPT with RMB 300,000 worth of satellite-navigation simulation software and open-source receiver code to support research by XUPT faculty and students. XUPT’s own description makes the purpose of these activities clear: the College seeks to “vigorously promote the military-civilian integration development strategy” through BeiDou research while building a platform for talent cultivation, application development, technology transfer, and incubation. XUPT thus describes an institutional framework that connects its faculty, students, and laboratories with PLA expertise, technology, and industry in furtherance of China’s military-civil fusion strategy.
...
Furthermore, a review of faculty biographies from XUPT’s College of Communications and Information Engineering identifies multiple faculty members who have participated in classified or defense-related research and weapons and equipment development projects.
...
These faculty disclosures further demonstrate that defense-related research is not peripheral to XUPT but is conducted by faculty within the very XUPT College of Communications and Information Engineering where the UNH-XUPT joint program resides.
...
This concern is especially acute here. A U.S. university whose engineering college is an NSA-designated Center of Academic Excellence in Cyber Operations should not maintain a joint academic program with a Chinese institution whose College of Communications and Information Engineering, the very college where the UNH-XUPT joint program resides, has faculty conducting extensive research in areas such as malware, cyberattack and network-intrusion detection, communications jamming and anti-jamming, eavesdropping, covert communications, and GNSS spoofing, including research with PLA and defense-affiliated entities. Such a partnership creates an unnecessary risk that American taxpayer-supported human and intellectual capital could be diverted to China’s defense research ecosystem.
...
This partnership puts the national security interests of the United States at risk. I therefore urge you to shut down UNH’s joint program with XUPT expeditiously."
Read the full letter here.