The University of Canterbury (UC) decided to collaborate with a top Chinese university that has strong links with the Chinese military without asking about the organisation’s defence connections.

In April 2018, UC signed an agreement with Harbin Institute of Technology (HIT), based in Harbin, Weihai and Shenzhen, to collaborate on teaching and research.

According to work done by The Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), a Canberra-based think tank partially funded by the Australian Government, the Harbin Institute is one of the main Chinese universities doing research in “sensitive civil-military technologies”.

As one of ‘Seven Sons of National Defence’ the university is prominent in research on ballistic missiles, information and cyber warfare and nuclear engineering, ASPI says.

In 2018, HIT spent RMB1.97 billion (NZ $420 million) –more than half of its research budget – on defence research. Nearly 30 per cent the university’s graduates that year found employment in the defence sector.

HIT was then described by Chinese state media as having “defence technology innovation and weapons and armaments modernisation as its core”.

UC said it did not make any inquiries about HIT’s military connections because the specific collaboration it had in mind did not cover defence. Neither did it seek advice from its China expert Professor Anne-Marie Brady, who has been uncharacteristically silent about the link.

Brady declined to answer questions from Stuff about whether she had warned her university about Harbin’s military connections, but she has previously written about research collaborations between New Zealand universities and the Chinese military.

In May, the US Bureau of Industry and Security added HIT to its Entity List. Being named on the list requires US universities to seek permission for certain types of research collaboration, before visas can be issued.

President Donald Trump in May announced tighter controls on Chinese students and researchers with links to China’s military. The proclamation, which targeted a number of institutions including HIT, said China used some Chinese students, mostly postgraduate students and post-doctorate researchers, to operate as non-traditional collectors of intellectual property.

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They were at high risk of being exploited or co-opted by Chinese authorities and provide particular cause for concern.

UC’s deputy vice-chancellor (Research), Professor Ian Wright, said the intention of research collaboration was to focus on “renewable energy generation (including wind and tidal energy), marine science, engineering and international finance and trade”.

HIT, he said, was ranked sixth in the world for engineering, above both Berkeley and Stanford in the United States and Imperial College London.

The university had not “explicitly” known about Harbin's Chinese military links before it signed the collaboration agreement and did not consult with Professor Brady.

“Given the nature of the proposed collaborative research, no enquiries were made at the time, but the Aotearoa New Zealand university sector has been increasingly aware of the sensitivity of some specific areas of research and technology.”

The universities had not collaborated on any research so far and only two HIT undergraduate students had studied for one semester at UC.

“University of Canterbury publishes thousands of research papers in the public domain every year, across a wide range of physical sciences, life sciences, engineering, technology, educational, and social science disciplines. This research has a wide range of applications.”

The university had processes to ensure its research was not misused, he said. The collaboration would be reassessed at the next review date.

ASPI researcher Alex Joske said while it was hard to know where to draw the line with Chinese institutions, the “default assumption” with HIT should be there was a “very high” risk of collaboration being diverted to military usage.

Universities had to think carefully about the entities they were collaborating with, the intentions of the researchers and the end use of research, he said.

Joske, who is half-Chinese and spent six years working in China, said even small overseas universities could be useful to the Chinese military as it gave Chinese scientists a “foot-in-the-door” to international research and institutions.

“Even if a university is not world-leading, it can still provide training, guidance, technology and equipment.”

Information about HIT was available on Chinese open source websites but that information was disappearing, he said.

“This agreement marks a great milestone between our two universities,” Harbin president Professor Xu Xiaofei said when signing the agreement in 2018.

“Later in the collaboration we will look to launch joint research projects, joint papers and joint laboratories. Through our cooperation we can contribute to the development of both countries’ education and economics.”

HIT did not respond to questions and neither did the Chinese Embassy.