ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Uyghurs in Spotlight of Evolutionary and Forensic Genetics: A Sino-German Collaboration 2005-2020

• In Event: New Perspectives on the History of Science Diplomacy 1

English Abstract

At the end of 2020, the Max Planck Society (MPG) quietly withdrew from the CAS-MPG Partner Institute for Computational Biology (PICB) in Shanghai. The institute had been a joint venture with the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) since 2005. For over a decade the PICB was considered a flagship pro-ject of not only bioscientific collaboration, but also Sino-German strategic part-nership, with the intention of intensifying institutional cooperation between the two leading research organizations. However, these high expectations were not met due to political and organizational differences between the national science systems, particularly regarding the social significance of basic rese-arch.
The final trigger for die MPG, to give up its share in the PICB, was a collabora-tive project at the intersection of evolutionary anthropology, DNA phenotyping, and forensic microbiology. Most of the test subjects came from the Uyghur ethnic group. In 2019, the New York Times exposed the link between the Chi-nese principal investigator and the Chinese Ministry of Public Security. The ar-ticle clearly highlighted the role of Western research institutions, including the MPG, and companies in enabling China to upgrade its biotechnological sur-veillance apparatus in Xinjiang.
Questions to be discussed include the relationship between science and poli-tics, the (non-)compliance with ethical standards in scientific research, particu-larly in international collaborations with partner institutions in authoritarian countries, and the failure of scientific cooperation to contribute to de-mocratization.

Author

• Carola Sachse, University of Vienna