Georgia Tech is cutting ties with a Chinese university that’s faced increased federal scrutiny over its potential links to the Chinese military.
The school said Friday it is ending a partnership with Tianjin University after an extensive investigation. The school said the roughly 300 students in the Georgia Tech Shenzhen Institute will have other opportunities to finish their degree requirements.
Steven McLaughlin, the school’s provost, said the decision to end a partnership that launched in 2016 was “difficult” but Georgia Tech will continue to seek to expand its international programs.
“We are 100% committed to expanding international experiences for our students,” he said in an interview. “We’d love for them to have that kind of experience in China and other parts of the world. This wasn’t an easy decision for us, but hopefully there’s opportunities to continue to grow.”
Georgia Tech initiated a review of its partnerships in China after the U.S. Commerce Department added Tianjin University to a list of foreign organizations deemed a national security concern.
The school decided against launching a planned doctoral program and sharply limited the number of students involved in the program.
Four years later, Tianjin University is still on the Commerce Department’s “entity list” and is a focus of an investigation by the Republican-controlled U.S. House Select Committee on the Chinese Community Party.
Several GOP members of Congress have also floated legislation to limit partnerships between U.S. institutions and counterparts in China.
McLaughlin said the school’s internal review found “no evidence whatsoever” that its partnership posed a threat to national security. But he said there was also no sign that Tianjin University was going to be removed from the federal watch list.
“We felt like this was the right time to announce the exit,” he said. “It was inevitable, so we decided to do it now.”
U.S. Rep. Virginia Foxx, the North Carolina Republican who chairs the House Education and Workforce Committee, said Friday that Georgia Tech should have ended the arrangement earlier.
“The captain of the Titanic didn’t get a gold star for passing out life vests, and it shouldn’t have taken a congressional investigation to spur Georgia Tech to end its partnership with a blacklisted Chinese entity,” she said in a statement. “Nonetheless, we’re glad that Georgia Tech has made the right call.”
