San Diego

The first in a planned decade-long series of meetings between US and Chinese scientific leaders was marred this week by the withdrawal of a powerful US Congressman, citing allegations of Chinese spying and illegal technology uses.

James Sensenbrenner (Republican, Wisconsin), chairman of the House Science Committee, cancelled his plans to attend the Sino–US Joint Science Policy Seminar as the delegation was leaving for the four-day meeting with representatives of the National Natural Sciences Foundation of China, due to open in Beijing last Sunday (24 October).

Sensenbrenner contacted Rita Colwell, the director of the National Science Foundation (NSF), the meeting's sponsor, asking her to cancel the delegation's trip because of continued Chinese provocations. “A seminar with senior officials from the White House and Congress could convey to the Chinese a business-as-usual attitude in our relationship on science and technology,” Sensenbrenner said in a statement.

The Congressman was angered by the indictment earlier this month of the China National Aero-Technology Import and Export Corporation and the McDonnell Douglas Corporation for the alleged illegal transfer of US defence technology to a Chinese missile factory.

He also quoted allegations of Chinese spying involving nuclear bomb secrets from the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico (see Nature 399, 395; 1999), and “mischaracterizations” by Chinese officials visiting Congress this month for the first time since the Tiananmen Square conflict.

But Colwell declined to call off the trip, saying in a statement that “I've consulted widely with colleagues within and without [President Bill Clinton's] administration, and there is unanimity that the seminar is not linked to Sensenbrenner's specific concerns”.

Colwell said the event “reflects the principle of free circulation of scientists and our continuing commitment to an open discussion of issues of common scientific interest”.

US participants at the seminar included representatives from the NSF, the National Institutes of Health, the National Academy of Engineering and several universities. The latter included Richard C. Atkinson, president of the University of California — ironically, the institution that manages the Los Alamos laboratory from which nuclear secrets are alleged to have been stolen.