Australia’s Adelaide University has rejected a number of lucrative Chinese research collaborations because of their possible links to Communist Party military technology research.
According to the South Australian newspaper The Advertiser, the University of Adelaide said in a submission to a parliamentary committee that it had rejected the projects, some of which involved research funding of up to A$3 million, through an internal review process.
The project that would have generated $3 million in research funding was a project on advanced materials. The university’s investigation found that the funding came from a Hong Kong company with far-reaching related interests in China, possibly even tied to money laundering or hidden assets, and that advanced materials research is often associated with military use.
The second project rejected by the University of Adelaide was a project on computer security and stability proposed by a Shenzhen company. Both projects were rejected before the federal government introduced strict regulations to crack down on foreign interference.
And the University of Adelaide has rejected five more collaborative projects since strict laws against foreign interference were implemented in May last year. The university, while not revealing the names of the rejected foreign universities, said it determined these were high-risk projects because they involved defense research and nuclear weapons.
The management of the University of Adelaide said that the university is one of the most intensively engaged in defense research in Australia and is alert to the recent changes in the nature of international collaborations.
The university also revealed that they should be the only university to have successfully renewed their membership in the Defense Industry Security Program.
On Tuesday, April 13, Australian Undersecretary of State for Foreign Affairs and Trade and former Australian Ambassador to China Frances Adamson called on graduates of the University of Adelaide to be mindful of the growing tensions between the United States and China.
She said the Chinese Communist Party was “challenging and undermining” international norms that had been agreed, including rules agreed with Australia. And today’s graduates could be quite directly affected, as the impact could have a ripple effect on peace and prosperity in Australia and around the world.
And a day earlier, speaking at the University of Adelaide, former Australian Defense Minister Christopher Pyne warned that war could break out between China and Australia within the next five to 10 years. She said she was not talking about a cyber war, but a real war that would result in human casualties.
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