It additionally mentioned that Berkeley college serving on the institute had acquired funding from the Protection Superior Analysis Tasks Company and different U.S. funding for the event of navy purposes, elevating issues about Chinese language entry to these specialists.
In April, for instance, a group from a Shenzhen-based lab that describes itself as being supported by the Tsinghua-Berkeley Shenzhen Institute mentioned it had received a contest in China to optimize a sort of superior chip know-how that the U.S. authorities is now attempting to stop Chinese language corporations from buying, the letter mentioned.
It’s not clear what position the college had in that mission, or if the partnership, or the institute’s different actions, would violate U.S. restrictions on China’s entry to know-how. In October, america set important limits on the kind of superior semiconductor know-how that might be shared with Chinese language entities, saying that the exercise posed a nationwide safety risk.
“Berkeley’s P.R.C.-backed collaboration with Tsinghua College raises many crimson flags,” the letter mentioned, referring to the Folks’s Republic of China. It was signed by Consultant Mike Gallagher, a Wisconsin Republican who chairs the committee, and Consultant Virginia Foxx, a Republican of North Carolina who’s the committee chair on schooling and the work power.
In an announcement to The New York Instances, U.C. Berkeley mentioned it takes issues about nationwide safety “very significantly” and was dedicated to complete compliance with legal guidelines governing worldwide tutorial engagement. “The campus is reviewing previous agreements and actions involving or linked to Tsinghua-Berkeley Shenzhen Institute” and would “absolutely and transparently cooperate with any federal inquiries,” it mentioned.