Japan eyes new rules on cross-border research collaboration

Both international students and local academics “under the strong influence of foreign governments” may soon need Japanese ministerial permission to access certain types of sensitive technology, according to new legislation being considered by Tokyo.

The proposed changes, which may be enacted by the 2022 fiscal year, have sparked a debate on how to balance the protection of national interests with growing cross-border collaborations.

Sources told Times Higher Education that the targets of Japan’s proposed new rules include China’s Thousand Talents Scheme, the Chinese military-linked institutions known as the “seven brothers”, and any academics engaged in sensitive fields.

China is now the largest sender of foreign researchers into Japan, surpassing traditional partners such as the US and UK, according to data collated by Futao Huang, a professor at the Research Institute for Higher Education at Hiroshima University. 

China is also linked to 98 per cent of the increases in new research in the Asia-Pacific region this past year, according to a report this year from the Nature Index.

Given China’s dominance, Japan is trying to close a loophole in which foreigners who stay in the country for six months or more are treated as “residents”, and therefore do not need permission to work on military technology.

The proposed change could make any “sensitive technology” applicable for military purposes into a “de facto import”, even if it is produced in Japan, according to a report by the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper. Under that categorisation, this sort of work would be subject to approval by the trade ministry.

It would be the latest of several measures Japan has taken to protect its intellectual property.

From 2018 to 2020, the proportion of Japanese universities that established “export control departments” jumped from 58 per cent to 72 per cent, according to the education ministry. The government has also increased scrutiny of study and other visas.

Professor Huang told THE that concerns about overseas ties predate the most recent regulations.

“The Japanese government has worked out a blacklist before, including some Chinese universities, research institutes, and companies,” he said. “Individual universities, including my university, and research institutes have already started to check if any Chinese graduate students and researchers come from Chinese universities and research institutes.”

The new rules would “inevitably hinder research and collaborations between Japan and China”, he said.

He added that the “hard sciences and sensitive areas” were the main targets, while the humanities and social sciences may be relatively spared.

The US’ strict measures on sensitive research have already caused some international students to fall through the cracks. A Trump-era proclamation barring any Chinese national with “military ties” has blocked thousands of postgraduate researchers from re-entering the US, because of their choice of undergraduate university.

Professor Huang felt that the impact in Japan would not be as great as the crackdown in the US, which is engaged in a trade war with China. This is partly because Japan’s national universities have traditionally not conducted as much military research, which is largely conducted at specialised institutes.

Japan’s proposed changes come just months after it announced plans to raise capital for a ¥10 trillion (£70 billion) endowment for university research, possibly in an attempt to regain ground that it had lost on technology research in the region.

joyce.lau@timeshighereducation.com