GOP's Bob Good Proposes to Block Taxpayer Dollars to Chinese Communist Party

Rep. Bob Good (R-VA) proposed legislation Thursday to ensure American taxpayer dollars do not go to the Chinese Communist Party.

Good, a freshman congressman elected last November, introduced the No Taxpayer Funding for the Chinese Communist Party Act. The legislation would require the attorney general provide Congress a report within one year of enacting the bill on the extent to which China has benefitted from taxpayer-funded research.

Good said in a statement Thursday the legislation would ensure that federal research does not move to benefit the Chinese government.

He said, “Americans hard-earned money should not be funding the Chinese Communist Party. It is in our national interest to ensure that our federally funded research is not being used as a vehicle to fund China’s communist propaganda, or to further strengthen an adversarial nation.”

The 2019 Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee found American taxpayer-funded research contributed to China’s rise over the last 20 years. The report noted:

Some countries, however, seek to exploit America’s openness to advance their
own national interests. The most aggressive of them has been China. China
primarily does this through its more than 200 talent recruitment plans—the most
prominent of which is the Thousand Talents Plan. Launched in 2008, the Thousand
Talents Plan incentivizes individuals engaged in research and development in the
United States to transmit the knowledge and research they gain here to China in
exchange for salaries, research funding, lab space, and other incentives. China
unfairly uses the American research and expertise it obtains for its own economic
and military gain. In recent years, federal agencies have discovered talent
recruitment plan members who downloaded sensitive electronic research files before
leaving to return to China, submitted false information when applying for grant
funds, and willfully failed to disclose receiving money from the Chinese government
on U.S. grant applications.

“This report exposes how American taxpayer-funded research has contributed to China’s global rise over the last 20 years,” the report added. “During that time, China openly recruited U.S.-based researchers, scientists, and experts in the public and private sector to provide China with knowledge and intellectual capital in exchange for monetary gain and other benefits.”

Good’s legislation would help expose the degree to which federal research has benefitted China.

The attorney general’s report to Congress would include a list of U.S. government-funded entities, such as research institutions, laboratories, and universities, have hired Chinese nationals to conduct research.

Good’s legislation follows as the Joe Biden administration scrapped a Donald Trump administration proposal that would require American universities to disclose their agreements with Confuscious Institutes, a Chinese-funded language program.