Waterloo, Toronto and McGill universities are touting their ranks among the best universities in the world.
They also have the dubious distinction of ranking in the top 10 universities outside of China for collaboration with the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) — the armed wing of the Communist Party of China — as measured by the number of peer-reviewed publications co-authored by PLA researchers between 2006 and 2017.
According to Australia’s Strategic Policy Institute, the PLA’s collaboration is greatest in the United States and the United Kingdom (about 500 each), Canada and Australia (300 each) and Germany and Singapore (about 100 each) — and is often unwittingly supported by taxpayers.
Operatives actively disguise their military affiliations, such as claiming to be from non-existent academic institutions, to work in areas such as hypersonic missiles, navigation technology, quantum physics, signal processing, cryptography, and autonomous vehicles.
PLA scientists sent abroad are Chinese Communist Party members who return to China. Western universities and governments seem ignorant of what the PLA refers to as “civil-military fusion” to modernize the PLA. Clear government policy direction is lacking on what President Xi Jinping has described as a cornerstone of People’s Republic of China national defence reform to build strategic capabilities and a strong military.
