By Michael Martina and David Brunnstrom
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The United States and China renewed a science cooperation agreement on Friday, the U.S. State Department said, this time with “robust national security guardrails,” despite objections from Republicans who argue that the decision should have been left to the incoming Trump administration.
For 45 years, the landmark U.S.-China Science and Technology Agreement (STA) has yielded cooperation across a range of scientific fields, creating a framework for agency exchanges and giving the U.S. access to Chinese data useful in areas such as monitoring earthquakes, weather and influenza.
But the deal, renewed about every five years since it was first signed in 1979, lapsed this year amid mounting concerns that China too often failed to uphold intellectual property provisions or reciprocity in data exchanges.
Even U.S. analysts who had supported renewing the agreement had said it needed to be fundamentally reworked to safeguard U.S. innovation given that China is now a scientific powerhouse in its own right.
Signed just weeks before President-elect Donald Trump’s Jan. 20 inauguration, the State Department said the new deal is significantly narrower than previous iterations and covers only basic research, not critical or emerging technologies core to the rivalry between the countries.
“As we negotiated this over the last year, we always kept in mind U.S. national security interests as our top and guiding consideration,” a senior State Department official told reporters in a call detailing the STA.
“We understood that failure to extend the STA could also have chilling effects in areas of scientific cooperation, which do benefit the United States,” the official said.
In a letter sent on Thursday, John Moolenaar, the Republican chair of the House of Representatives’ select committee on China, asked Secretary of State Antony Blinken to “immediately suspend efforts” to renew the deal.
“A renewal of the STA in the final days of the administration is a clear attempt to tie the hands of the incoming administration and deny them the opportunity to either leave the agreement or negotiate a better deal for the American people,” said the letter seen by Reuters.
Republicans on the committee had led a charge to get the State Department to scrap any new arrangement, arguing that China – which eagerly sought its renewal – would exploit it to enhance its military development.
China’s Foreign Ministry called the five-year renewal an “important measure.”
“It will not only promote the scientific and technological progress and economic and social development of the two countries, but also advance the two sides’ ability to cope with global common challenges and enhance the well-being of the people of the world,” the ministry said.
Under the deal, the State Department is responsible for risk-benefit analysis of any cooperation proposed by other agencies.
The agreement includes strengthened provisions on researcher safety and data reciprocity, as well as a dispute resolution mechanism should either side fail to abide by its terms, the State Department official said.
Despite that, the official acknowledged that the United States remained concerned about what it sees as China’s record of inhibiting data flows and the “complete lack of transparency” often associated with its scientific work.
U.S. concerns about the agreement have grown since its previous renewal under the first Trump administration.
The State Department said in the briefing that despite the brief lapse in the agreement this year as renewal talks were underway, cooperation under the framework continued.
“There wasn’t an abrupt cessation of any ongoing activity at that point,” a second senior State Department official said, adding that the new deal contained a “termination clause” that could be invoked if dispute resolution failed.