Australia’s most influential STEM research increasingly depends on collaboration with China, yet excessive security settings risk pushing universities and researchers away from work that serves the public good.

News that the National Science Foundation – the US counterpart to the Australian Research Council (ARC) – has proposed to ban grant recipients from nearly all collaboration with China is bound to send chills down the spines of Australia-based researchers in the Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) areas.

According to the Clarivate InCites database, of Australian publications that have appeared in the 10 per cent most-cited STEM papers since 2020, the global top-tier, 52 per cent involve collaboration with researchers in China – three times more frequently than collaboration with those in the US.

Australia’s research governance frameworks draw significantly on American threat assessments and response practices. When conducting due diligence on potential partners in China, Australian universities are often advised to consult various lists of Chinese universities with military ties that have been produced or funded by the US government.

Local universities and researchers have already been warned by the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) that their “sensitive research” is at risk of being stolen by foreign intelligence agencies, to the detriment of individuals’ careers, institutional reputations and national security.

While ASIO is careful to make clear that espionage and foreign interference threats are not just coming from one country, Director-General Mike Burgess has only ever named one in public comments related to the........

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