Chinese Involvement in Higher Education in America

Floor Speech

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Mr. KILEY. Thank you very much to my colleague from Florida. I appreciate you identifying this very important issue, the attempt of the Chinese Communist Party to gain influence at American universities in very concerning ways because it so clearly highlights the mentality and strategy of the CCP, that they understand where the battle lines are being drawn in the 21st century.

The truly concerning thing is that increasingly, China is beating the United States at its own game, outpacing us and the rest of the world in key areas of technological advancements.

Through their actions, the CCP has shown an understanding that the 21st century will belong to the most innovative Nation, the one that is able to harness the whole power of new technologies.

China has known for decades that Nation was unquestionably the United States. But what we have seen over the last 2 decades is that China has dramatically ramped up its own investment in research and development, cutting into America's traditional dominance.

From 2000 to 2019, China's share of global R&D quadrupled to nearly a quarter, while our share slid from 37 percent to just 27 percent.

China has increased its R&D spending by nearly 16 times over the same period and plans to compound its R&D investments by an additional 7 percent annually.

By contrast, Federal R&D investment in the United States has never surpassed .8 percent of GDP over the last decade.

Of course, spending isn't the only metric that matters. The United States is also increasingly losing the talent battle, and the trend lines are getting worse.

China has consistently graduated more STEM Ph.D.s than the United States, and of course, many are getting educated right here in the United States.

Looking at the publication of peer-reviewed articles and journals, Chinese scholars surpassed the United States in the last decade.

In 2020, China published 38 percent more peer-reviewed articles than the United States and is on track to extend this gap even further over the next 5 years.

This all puts into perspective the pervasive attempts by the Chinese Communist Party to gain leverage over American universities.

Even though colleges and universities are required to report foreign gifts and contracts under section 117 of the Higher Education Act, over $6.5 billion in unreported Federal money received by colleges has already been uncovered.

The Biden administration has done little to enforce this reporting requirement or open new investigations into how China is influencing our higher education system even though China wields the spending to co-opt innovative research. China has signaled that intellectual property is absolutely key to its long-term goals.

For years, the CCP sought to acquire IP through outright theft from U.S. companies or by gaining influence in our universities.

But what we also have to acknowledge in this discussion is that their strategy has gotten much more sophisticated.

In addition to outright theft, China has signaled its plans to, in fact, elevate the status of the China National Intellectual Property Administration to make it a top-level independent agency.

While President Biden didn't mention IP at all in his most recent state of the Union address, Chinese President Xi Jinping speaks about IP frequently.

``We will increase investment in science and technology through diverse channels and strengthen legal protection of intellectual property rights . . .'', he said in his speech at the opening of the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China last year.

So clearly, the United States is at risk of forfeiting our technological edge at a time when it is more important than ever to protect our national interests.

To outcompete China, we need to out-innovate China, and that requires policymakers to act with urgency, not only to protect our companies and universities from Chinese influence but also to change the policy environment in ways that promote and protect American innovation.

Unfortunately, recent policy changes have done just the opposite. For example, FTC Chair Lina Khan has proposed sweeping new rules to unilaterally ban employers from using noncompete agreements, something California, by the way, has already done.

This will hamstring employers in the most competitive, trade-secret- rich sectors: artificial intelligence, biotechnology, and provision manufacturing, and render the United States less competitive than China.

Meanwhile, administrative processes at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office are creating headaches and worse for innovators seeking to defend their patents.

A quasi-judicial administrative body within the USPTO, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board or PTAB, has become the favorite forum for companies to challenge the validity of patents they are accused of infringing.

This works to the disadvantage of innovators and small businesses who must defend their IP in court and the PTAB simultaneously, reducing the incentive to invent in the first place.

But here is the good news. The United States has a proven track record of beating authoritarian governments in strategic technological competitions. We didn't beat the Soviet Union to the Moon by chance. It required a generational investment in cutting-edge research and development, which was enabled by American citizens solving the toughest technological problems of their day.

We have that same capacity in the challenges we now face in the 21st century, but that requires a change in how we approach intellectual property and innovation in this country.

I think that the issue that is being highlighted today, the outright attempts by the CCP to go to our centers of research, of higher learning, our centers of intellectual life in this country shows that they understand the stakes and it is time that we here in Congress and throughout our government understand that as well.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my fellow subcommittee chair for bringing this issue to our attention.

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