Academics at Imperial College London have worked with scientists at Chinese institutions linked to Beijing’s armed forces and defence sector on research with potential military applications.
Since the beginning of 2023, academics at the world-leading British university have been named as co-authors on at least five studies with figures from Chinese organisations at the heart of China’s military-industrial complex.
The organisations included China’s Army Military Transportation University, two of the country’s “Seven Sons of National Defence” universities, and the research institute of a steel supplier to the Chinese military.
Academic co-operation that could strengthen the People’s Liberation Army has become an increasingly sensitive political issue in the UK at a time of heightened geopolitical tension between Beijing and the West.
Oliver Dowden, UK deputy prime minister, told the Financial Times: “I take this issue extremely seriously.”
He added: “We are reviewing provisions which protect our academic sector and identifying what more can be done to respond robustly and in the national interest.” New proposals are expected to be announced in the coming months.
Alicia Kearns, Conservative chair of the Commons foreign affairs committee, said: “Any research with a potential military application is sensitive, from water salination to titanium alloys. It’s vital research organisations interrogate who they are partnering with.”
Imperial said: “We regularly review our policies in line with evolving government guidance and legislation, working closely with the appropriate government departments, and in line with our commitments to UK national security.”
In recent years the UK government has toughened its rules on the overseas transfer of technology. Universities have to obtain export licences for the most-sensitive research with potential military uses.
But there is a broad exemption for “basic scientific research”, meaning studies undertaken in the pursuit of new knowledge rather than fulfilling a particular practical objective.
Imperial in 2022 faced intense scrutiny over its joint research with Chinese institutions and has closed four research laboratories that were linked to Chinese defence companies.
Two closures were reported in 2022. A further two, collaborations with Chinese steelmaker Shougang Group and state-owned aerospace manufacturer Comac, have also closed, people familiar with the matter said.
The university, one of the UK’s top science and technology institutions, remains at the forefront of Sino-British links, including partnerships with Chinese telecoms company Huawei and Aviation Industry Corporation of China, a major state-owned defence and aerospace group.
The university boasts on its website that it is the UK’s “number one university collaborator” with China, publishing over 600 research papers with Chinese institutions each year.
Among the studies identified by the FT and published since the start of last year was an August 2023 paper that listed a researcher at Shougang Research Institute of Technology as a co-author with Imperial academics.
Shougang supplies steel to the Chinese military. The study examined the material limits of a class of advanced high-strength steel that has been proposed for use in civil and military applications.
Another listed a senior lecturer at Imperial as a co-author in a paper about high-powered batteries, published in February last year, with a researcher from China’s Army Military Transportation University. Imperial said the lecturer reviewed the work but did not design or carry out the research.
A third paper, published in June last year, examined how heat treatment could strengthen a common titanium alloy, Ti-6Al-4V, widely used in both military and civilian aerospace.
The paper’s co-authors included a senior Imperial researcher and academics from Harbin Institute of Technology, one of the “Seven Sons of National Defence” universities with close links to China’s military and defence industry.
A researcher from Beijing Xinghang Electro-mechanical Equipment Co Ltd, a Chinese defence company, was also listed as a contributor on the study.
Another paper involving a “Seven Sons” institution, Northwestern Polytechnical University in Xi’an, published in November, examined “electromagnetic interference shielding” of a new type of carbon-fibre reinforced polymer (CFRP) composite. CFRP composites are used in aerospace and military hardware.
An Imperial academic is named as a co-author on the paper, credited with reviewing and editing it. The academic joined Imperial in 2022 from another UK university which a person close to Imperial said was the institution “involved in this work”.
A fifth paper, published last April, examined how thermoplastic fibre-metal laminate (FML) panels responded to blasts within a confined space. FML panels are used in military aircraft and armoured vehicles as well as in civilian contexts.
The paper’s co-authors were an Imperial professor and researchers at the Wuhan University of Technology, which boasts of its research contributions to “China’s national defence development”. Academics from other UK universities were also involved.
One of the WUT researchers was Kong Xiangshao, who has published 16 other papers with Imperial researchers since 2019, including a 2021 study that looked at protecting aircraft fuel tanks from penetration by “high-velocity projectiles”.
Outside of his work with Imperial, Kong has published nine papers that examine either warheads or protecting naval ships from explosions. Kong did not respond to a request for comment.
Suveen Mathaudhu, a professor in the metallurgical and materials engineering department at Colorado School of Mines, said the recent papers identified by the FT fell under the category of basic scientific research.
But he added: “As with any other basic science discoveries, the scientific capital gained may be translated to ‘applied research’ and used by the civilian sector, but also for defence technologies.”
Luke de Pulford, executive director of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China and a leading hawk on Beijing, said: “These projects are at best naive, and at worst wilfully blind to the role research like this plays in the build-up of Beijing’s growing military-industrial complex.”
Trevor Taylor, director of the defence, industries & society programme at the Royal United Services Institute, said the research identified by the FT was not on topics “publicly noted by western states as key for future military advances”, such as AI, directed energy weapons and hypersonics.
However, the topics of the papers would nonetheless “be of some interest for some areas of military developers” as potential components in larger defence systems, he added.
Imperial said: “Partnerships and collaborations at Imperial are subject to due diligence and are regularly reviewed, and clear research codes of practice apply to all staff at Imperial.”
It added: “Imperial’s research is open and routinely published in leading international journals and we conduct no classified research.”
The Chinese embassy in London said criticism of joint UK-China research was “baseless” and driven by “ideological bias”.
“Exchanges and co-operation between Chinese and British universities and scientific research institutions are mutually beneficial,” the embassy said.
It also criticised “overstretching the concept of national security and politicising and instrumentalising trade and tech issues”.
Shougang Group, Beijing Xinghang, Northwestern Polytechnical University and Wuhan University of Technology did not respond to requests for comment. Harbin Institute of Technology and Army Military Transportation University could not be reached for comment.
Additional reporting by Joe Leahy and Wenjie Ding