cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/4648971

Archived version

  • Chinese defense-linked universities have dramatically increased research partnerships with Russian institutions in recent years, providing Moscow with access to innovations and know-how that help offset Western sanctions and export controls., a major new expansion of the China Defence Universities Tracker by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) has found
  • The ASPI tracker, which includes now more than 180 Chinese civilian and military, points out China’s Beihang University and the Moscow Aviation Institute as one key partnership, focusing on aircraft engine development, and Xi’an Technological University with the Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University on advanced weapons systems

As international scrutiny of Chinese-foreign joint venture universities has grown, ASPI has added three prominent joint ventures to the tracker, allowing users to easily compare the relative risks of joint venture universities and Chinese universities. Expanded research on international collaborations also reveals that Chinese universities are still partnering with British and European institutions with the explicit goal, for example, of advancing China’s national aerospace industry.

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The tracker also now includes the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), the world’s largest scientific research institution, and 10 affiliated institutes. Users can now quickly see why CAS occupies such a preeminent place in global science research; the tracker features CAS’s global and national rankings in 64 critical technologies tracked by ASPI, including the 31 critical technologies where CAS leads the world in high-impact research. These fields include quantum sensors, high performance computing and advanced robotics.

These new research findings have been applied to more than 60 universities and institutes in the tracker database, complementing the existing database of nearly 100 civilian universities, 50 People’s Liberation Army institutions, China’s nuclear weapons program, three Ministry of State Security institutions, four Ministry of Public Security universities and 12 state-owned defence industry conglomerates. From early 2026, updates will see new institutions added to the tracker and research additions extended to more existing institutions.