The United States needs to more thoroughly vet Chinese students who come into the country to study at American universities, a U.S. official said Tuesday.
The official added that controls should center around protecting against the possibility of the Chinese Communist Party using Chinese students as agents to steal American intellectual property and technology.
Director of the Defense Innovation Unit Michael Brown said one measure the United States can take is to more closely scrutinize backgrounds of Chinese students.
An Australian think tank report says China’s Peoples Liberation Army, or PLA, has sponsored more than 2,500 military scientists to attend universities in technologically advanced countries like United States, Australia, Canada, and the U.K., in the last decade.
Once overseas, they would disguise their military connections and transfer knowledge and technology to the PLA.
“We can’t just have the barn door open and let there be no consequences, so we unfortunately have to be more mindful of vetting some of the students and putting in some protections,” Brown said during a panel discussion at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
“This is part of China’s comprehensive, systematic plan to vacuum technology from around the world,” he said.
Reporting by Kitty Wang
