TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — U.S. Republican representatives on Tuesday (June 27) called on the State Department to scrap a 44-year-old U.S.-China tech deal, which they say Beijing is using to bolster its own military as tensions rise in the Taiwan Strait.

The U.S.-China Science and Technology Agreement (STA) was signed in 1979 when the U.S. ended diplomatic relations with Taiwan in favor of China. It has been renewed every five years and has resulted in collaborations ranging from atmospheric and agricultural science to fundamental research in physics and chemistry.

The agreement is set to expire on Aug. 27 but China's military build-up and theft of U.S. scientific and commercial intellectual property raises questions about whether the agreement should be renewed. As such, Mike Gallagher, chair of the Select Committee on the CCP, and nine other Republican representatives have sent a letter urging Secretary of State Antony Blinken to scuttle the agreement.

In the letter, they warned that research partnerships operated under the STA may have fostered technologies that could be later used against the U.S. For example, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in 2018 organized a project with China's Meteorological Administration to launch instrumented balloons for atmospheric studies, and in 2023 China "used similar balloon technology to surveil U.S. military sites on U.S. territory—a clear violation of our sovereignty."

The lawmakers said, "The PRC uses academic researchers, industrial espionage, forced technology transfers, and other tactics to gain an edge in critical technologies, which in turn fuels the People’s Liberation Army modernization." They added the U.S. "must stop fueling its own destruction" and that allowing the STA to expire is "a good first step."