A new congressional committee report released Monday has revealed that thousands of joint research publications produced by American and Chinese researchers at U.S. universities and funded by hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars have aided Xi Jinping’s communist regime in modernizing its military and advancing its technology.

The report, the result of a year-long investigation by the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party and the House Education and Workforce Committee, identified over 8,800 publications funded by the Department of Defense (DOD) and 185 publications funded by the U.S. intelligence community that had China-affiliated coauthors. The papers covered research related to “dual-use, critical, and emerging technologies” including “hypersonics, directed energy, nuclear and high-energy physics, and artificial intelligence and autonomy [robotics].”

The report found that 2,000 of the DOD-funded papers “included PRC [People’s Republic of China] coauthors who were directly affiliated with the PRC’s defense research and industrial base.” The topics of some publications had “direct military applications — such as high-performance explosives, tracking of targets, and drone operation networks — that the PLA [People’s Liberations Army] would use against the U.S. military in the event of a conflict.”

The congressional report further highlighted how China used joint institutes set up between U.S. research universities and PRC universities “under the guise of academic cooperation,” but were in fact used to “conceal a sophisticated system for transferring critical U.S. technologies and expertise to the PRC, including to blacklisted entities linked to China’s defense and security apparatus.”

In particular, three of these joint institutes were examined: Tsinghua-Berkeley Shenzhen Institute (TBSI), Georgia Tech Shenzhen Institute (GTSI), and Sichuan University-Pittsburgh Institute (SCUPI). Research on critical and emerging technologies was conducted at the institutes by American academics, who often traveled to China “to collaborate on research, advise PRC scholars, teach and train PRC graduate students, and collaborate with PRC companies.” This activity, according to the report, created “a direct pipeline for the transfer of the benefit of their research expertise to the PRC.”

As a result of the congressional investigation, “Georgia Tech decided to terminate GTSI and curtail its partnership with Tianjin University.” In addition, UC Berkeley stated that it had “started the process of relinquishing all ownership” in TBSI, and is “in the early stages of unwinding the joint legal entity.”

Still, the report revealed that “significant failures” had been uncovered regarding universities like Georgia Tech and UC Berkeley not disclosing foreign monetary gifts from China. As the report noted, Section 117 of the Higher Education Act requires that universities report any gift from a foreign source valued at $250,000 or more in a calendar year to the U.S. Department of Education. However, “the Biden-Harris Department of Education has failed to open a single enforcement action under Section 117 of the Higher Education Act in the last four years, despite widespread evidence of lack of reporting.” The report went on to contend that China’s financial gifts to American universities likely equal “hundreds of millions, if not billions in total,” which “gives PRC entities troubling influence without transparency and contribute to building the research relationships that pose risks to U.S. national security.”

Among other recommendations, the Committees’ report urged the adoption of the DETERRENT Act, which would strengthen the enforcement mechanism of the Higher Education Act by lowering the threshold of foreign gift reporting to $50,000 and close reporting loopholes, among other measures.

The committee’s findings come at a time of unprecedented aggression that is being directed at the U.S. by China. Last week, U.S. government and military officials highlighted how the communist regime’s notable buildup of its military and satellite capabilities combined with government-sponsored hacking activity targeting U.S. government agencies, media organizations, and universities have exceeded the threats posed by the Cold War.

Gordon Chang, an expert on China who serves as distinguished senior fellow at the Gatestone Institute, was blunt in his reaction to the report. “We have tried to commit suicide,” he told The Washington Stand. “We need to stop doing that.”