GRS open to cooperation if it ensures Sabah's political stability
TAWAU: Gabungan Rakyat Sabah (GRS) has no issue working with other political coalitions, including Pakatan Harapan (PH), as long as it is aimed at creating political stability and, subsequently, ensuring the wellbeing and welfare of the people.
Its chairman, Datuk Seri Hajiji Noor, who is also the Sabah Chief Minister, said any decision related to political cooperation with other parties would be discussed and decided by the GRS Supreme Council.
However, Hajiji stressed that any such decision must take into consideration the sentiments and aspirations of the people in the state.
He said he and Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim had a lengthy discussion on the importance of political stability for Sabah's future during their meeting yesterday.
"We agreed on the need for cooperation to ensure continued progress and development.
"We respect the partnership and the advice to create political stability, because with stability, we can move forward and implement development programmes.
"In terms of cooperation, we have no issues. The state government, along with us, consists of GRS and Pakatan Harapan," he told the media during the "A Day with the Chief Minister" programme in Kunak, near here.
It was reported yesterday that Anwar, who is PH chairman and PKR president, had said he would leave it to GRS to discuss possible cooperation with Barisan Nasional (BN).
On Friday, PH and BN announced themselves as an election pact for the upcoming Sabah polls. The decision prompted Hajiji to state that GRS would go solo if the Peninsular-based coalitions proceed with their cooperation.
Hajiji also highlighted the importance of understanding the sentiments and aspirations of the people of Sabah to ensure that political cooperation progresses harmoniously and effectively.
"We need to consider the sentiments and aspirations of our people to establish a political understanding that will move us forward.
"Whatever decisions we make in the upcoming elections will be referred to and decided by the highest council members of GRS," he said.
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Similarly, months after a Duke University student published an account of her experiences with Chinese media during a trip to China, two US representatives wrote to Duke's president seeking to shut down Duke Kunshan, the university's joint campus with Wuhan University in China, alleging that it was helping to facilitate Chinese propaganda and intellectual property theft. And, months after claims that Chinese students were spying near a military site in Michigan, the University of Michigan – facing pressure from lawmakers – announced it would end its partnership with Shanghai Jiao Tong University. Capping this trend, the State Department announced last week it would 'aggressively' revoke visas of Chinese students, including those with 'connections' to China's Communist Party and in 'critical fields', citing Beijing's 'intelligence collection' and theft of US research. Lawmakers and government officials involved say that US engagement with Chinese students and universities must be restricted to protect national security. But US-based China scholars and education advocates call the risks overstated and often unsubstantiated, and the proposed responses disproportionate. The cost, they say, of misjudging the balance between openness and protecting national security is high – putting not only America's ability to understand China, but also its capacity to innovate, at risk. That risk has become all the more potent as US President Donald Trump's administration targets international students more broadly, from expanding the review of visa applicants' social media accounts to revoking Harvard University's authority to host them at all. 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'I fear that articles like this will put a target on the back of Chinese students who are genuinely in the United States to get a good education,' she said, arguing that targeting behaviours rather than specific nationalities or institutions might be more productive. The Review article cited anonymous students and experts to claim the presence of spies at Stanford – without describing any concrete intelligence-gathering operation involving a current student or faculty member. It cites one former visiting researcher from China – Chen Song – who was indicted by the Department of Justice in 2021 for concealing her affiliation with the People's Liberation Army. The case was ultimately dismissed, a fact the report did not mention. Without directly criticising the article, some Stanford researchers and faculty warned that a more systematic collection of evidence was crucial to 'sound policy'. They also pushed for using spying-related terms more precisely. 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Daum recalled the Justice Department's China Initiative, a controversial and deactivated programme begun in the first Trump administration, saying that in the name of protecting against economic espionage, its investigations focused more on individuals' connections to China rather than on criminal acts related to the transfer of intellectual property. 'Naturally, crimes should be investigated, and confidential materials in businesses and universities should be protected,' Daum said. 'There is no basis, however, for suspecting anyone based solely on their nationality, ethnicity, affiliations, or the affiliations of their affiliations – such as where they only attended a school that had military research ties unrelated to their own work.' Levine said that, left unchecked, broad classifications would 'cast a net so wide that non-sensitive programmes that benefit Americans will be inadvertently affected'. That has already happened in states across the country. 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Andrew Polk, founder of the Trivium China consultancy, noted that US scrutiny often hinged on whether an institution has ties to the Chinese Communist Party – but in China, 'everything is linked to the CCP'. That ubiquity, he argued, makes such a standard too blunt to be meaningful. Jessica Chen Weiss, a professor of China studies at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), said reports about Chinese intelligence gathering often 'make little effort to convey a sense of proportion, either in the risks or benefits of having Chinese students'. The Stanford report, for instance, 'uses language like 'existential' without acknowledging that more than 90 per cent of Chinese-born doctoral students in STEM stay in the US ... And it assumes that the US can stay ahead if we prevent Chinese IP theft, whereas China is in the lead on many technologies', she said. Ho-fung Hung, another professor at SAIS, said clear parameters should be established for research areas that are off-limits. 'Even at the height of the Cold War, US and USSR scientific and technological cooperation continued. But a clear boundary needs to be set,' he said. 'Without such boundary, universities are going to be cautious and reluctant to continue working with Chinese scholars and students in all fields,' he continued, adding that China could help the situation by 'rethinking, revising, or refining the law that obliges all individual citizens, companies and organisations to spy for the state'. - SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST
