The Centre has decided to advise higher educational institutions to “restrict” academic collaboration with Chinese companies, especially tech firms, citing security reasons. It plans to direct educational institutions to conduct a detailed enquiry before entering into any Memorandum of Understanding (MoUs) with such firms, News18 has learnt.
Sources said the government has decided to issue directions in the coming days to educational institutions, in particular technology institutes, after it came across several vital proofs that China is reportedly running a global espionage operation through its technology companies.
“It has been decided to advise Indian colleges and universities that they should not have academic collaboration with Chinese Commercial Entities (CCE) without taking due clearance from the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) and Ministry of External Affairs (MEA),” sources said.
A former senior professor associated with IIT-Delhi, not wishing to be named, said: “Similar directions were issued earlier as well in a verbal communication from the MHA to not get into any academic or research projects with Chinese firms, as there were political and strategic issues associated with it. There have been many tech giants from China, which wanted to get into research activities with the institute, but we had specific directions to turn down any such collaborations.”
Sources said educational institutes will also be advised to take prior permission from ministries concerned before signing any sort of MoUs and educational exchange programs with China-based companies, universities and institutions.
“It has been decided to restrict any activity on part of educational institutions under any sort of MoU or such collaborations with CCEs till a clearance is obtained by the ministry concerned. Similar directions were given earlier also and it has been decided to advise them again after it was found that some of the educational institutes are signing MoUs and exchange programs with CCEs for various tech projects, but they are not taking prior approval,” sources said.
Top police officials had also flagged the role of CCEs in intelligence collection in the country during the recent conference of Director Generals and Inspector Generals of Police, which was attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah. The role of CCEs was highlighted in papers submitted by officers at the conference that was held during January 20-22 in the national capital. All the papers submitted were posted on the conference’s website, but were later removed.
“Sustained intelligence investigations since 2020 have revealed a disturbing picture of the role of CCE in India. They are used by the Chinese State in line with its ‘thousand grains of sand’ approach to intelligence collection to fuel the State’s limitless hunger for data and secrets. CCEs operate in India with five primary objectives: to influence minds, to build economic control, for acquisition of data, for CI/espionage and to target scientists for innovation and IPRs,” one of the papers submitted during the conference cited.
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