Australia bluntly weaponizes a Chinese student’s visa

Over the weekend, Queensland University of Technology PhD student Xiaolong Zhu became national news – and not for a good reason.

Zhu is a Chinese citizen and his visa to study in Australia has been denied on the grounds of being “directly or indirectly associated with the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.”

The story begins in October 2019, when the university offered Zhu a scholarship to undertake a PhD in robotics. His research would focus on how drones navigate in urban environments without access to GPS.

But in June 2020, Zhu was told the foreign minister had ruled him a risk of proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, specifically missiles and rockets. That decision may be in part motivated by Zhu’s prior education at Beihang University, an institution closely aligned with China’s military and a lead developer of ballistic missiles and stealth aircraft.

Zhu’s appeal is ongoing, and he has done nothing obviously wrong and has not been charged with or convicted of any crime. So why is his story such a big deal?

Zhu’s case, the fifth in which a researcher has been barred from the country on suspicion of links to weapons of mass destruction, is just the latest outcome of Australia’s patchy and irregular approach to “research security.”

Australia’s approach to protecting certain types of research from national security threats is inconsistent and out of step with that of many of our allies.

The United States, United Kingdom, Canada, the European Union and New Zealand all have national policies on research security. Australia does not.

Instead, we have voluntary University Foreign Interference Taskforce guidelines, first written in 2019 and updated in 2021. These guidelines were originally written before