“Weaving a cocoon to imprison itself”: Australia’s China research dilemma

News that the National Science Foundation – the US counterpart to the Australian Research Council (ARC) – has proposed to ban grant recipients from nearly all collaboration with China is bound to send chills down the spines of Australia-based researchers in the Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) areas.

According to the Clarivate InCites database, of Australian publications that have appeared in the 10 per cent most-cited STEM papers since 2020, the global top-tier, 52 per cent involve collaboration with researchers in China – three times more frequently than collaboration with those in the US.

Australia's research governance frameworks draw significantly on American threat assessments and response practices. When conducting due diligence on potential partners in China, Australian universities are often advised to consult various lists of Chinese universities with military ties that have been produced or funded by the US government.   

Local universities and researchers have already been warned by the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) that their “sensitive research” is at risk of being stolen by foreign intelligence agencies, to the detriment of individuals’ careers, institutional reputations and national security.

While ASIO is careful to make clear that espionage and foreign interference threats are not just coming from one country, Director-General Mike Burgess has only ever named one in public comments related to the research sector: China.

Speaking at a Five Eyes event in California in 2023, Burgess revealed that ASIO had disrupted a plot by Chinese intelligence “to infiltrate a prestigious Australian research institution”. He added that, “The Chinese government are engaged in the most sustained, sophisticated and scaled theft of intellectual property and expertise in human history”.

ASIO input has already become part of the ARC grants process. Although applications are assessed through independent peer review, the Minister for Education can override these expert recommendations for “reasons relevant the security, defence or international relations of Australia”. In May 2026, Jason Clare exercised this power to stop 13 grants from being funded. 

The findings of UTS:ACRI's In Transit and In Limbo reports are also consistent with more visiting Chinese scholars and PhD students being subjected to extended security assessments as part of the visa regime, and consequently, experiencing long delays in approval, or feeling compelled to withdraw applications and go elsewhere.

ASIO says the reason universities and researchers are a “particular target” is because of their “open and collaborative nature” and they are “world leaders in developing cutting-edge technology”. It is where Australia has “particular technology or research strengths” that the risks are most acute.   

But STEM researchers in mainland China have appeared on 55 per cent of the world’s top-tier STEM paper since 2020, triple the US share and 11 times that of Australia.

Of course, there could be niche sub-fields where Australia remains strong relative to China.

But run down the list of “critical technologies” that the Australian government has deemed “sensitive”, and China is more capable than Australia in essentially all of them. 

Many researchers and universities have concluded that the safest or simplest option is to give up on China-related collaborations altogether due to the absence of clear and proportionate guidelines and excessively securitised and burdensome administrative processes.

This helps to explain why the proportion of ARC grants in STEM fields involving China has halved since 2019, despite China’s status as a science super power surging during this period.

It is also important to understand what researchers at Australian universities actually do.

ASIO has rightly warned about espionage risks surrounding Australia’s involvement in initiatives such as the AUKUS partnership. Protecting national security secrets is precisely what intelligence agencies are supposed to do. Protecting commercially valuable intellectual property, on the other hand, is typically handled by universities and companies.

But classified research like that associated with AUKUS only accounts for a tiny fraction of activity at Australian universities. The latest figures show that just 1.8 per cent of university R&D expenditure is directed towards defence-related objectives.

And when classified research is undertaken, it is subject to an entirely different and far more stringent set of safeguards. These encompass security governance, personnel vetting, security clearances, physical access controls and dedicated cyber protections.

In contrast, the bread and butter of STEM research at universities is what is known as “fundamental research”. This is work intended to be published, shared and scrutinised. An intelligence officer sitting in Shanghai, Sydney or Seattle doesn’t need to plot how to acquire it covertly.

When the Australian government amended its export control regime in 2024 to align it more closely with AUKUS partners, the intention was never to restrict collaboration on fundamental research with China or anyone else.

A training document produced by the Department of Defence for universities a year after the changes explained that the fundamental research exemption “expanded” a previous one that referred to “basic research”, and this had “widened the net for research activities to be considered exempt from controls”.

It even cited research into “cybersecurity principles and techniques that could enhance both civilian and military systems” and on “new composite materials that could potentially be used in military applications, such as lightweight armour” as examples of activities that could qualify for the fundamental research exemption. 

Reflecting on the current environment, one Chinese-Australian biochemical scientist we spoke to referred to a Chinese phrase to liken Australian universities becoming “a silkworm who weaves a cocoon to imprison itself”. A professor of materials engineering used a Chinese idiom to describe Australia’s research governance as a strategy of “better to err on the side of killing one thousand innocent people than risk letting a guilty person go free”.

If the US wishes to engage in self-harm, it is entitled to do so. But that is no reason for Australia to follow. 

Professor James Laurenceson is Director of the Australia-China Relations Institute at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS:ACRI),

Wanning Sun is a Professor of Media and Communication Studies at UTS.