A UC San Diego working group wants the United States to replace an increasingly binary argument over Chinese investment with three operating lanes: prohibit transactions that present unacceptable security risks, permit others with enforceable safeguards and encourage investments that deliver clear economic or technological benefits. The proposal is a policy framework, not a change in federal law.
The 21st Century China Center released the report, titled Selective Openness, after 18 specialists from academia, industry and policy met seven times between October 2025 and June 2026. Peter Cowhey, a former dean of UC San Diego's School of Global Policy and Strategy, chaired the group. Its premise is that treating every transaction alike can miss both real threats and useful capital.
At the center is the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, the interagency body that reviews deals for national-security concerns. The group recommends modernizing that process so reviewers weigh potential benefits alongside risk and use conditions that can be monitored and enforced. That could mean limits on data access, governance requirements or operational separation instead of an automatic approval or prohibition.
Execution is the hard part. A safeguard has value only if an agency can verify compliance after a deal closes, and the report's broader balancing test would ask officials to compare benefits that may be uncertain with risks that may be difficult to disclose publicly. More categories can produce a finer decision, but they can also create more room for delay and disagreement unless standards, deadlines and enforcement responsibilities are explicit.
The group tested its approach against corporate governance, cybersecurity and data, clean energy, life sciences and humanoid robotics. Those sectors expose different pressure points. A battery plant can add manufacturing capacity while raising supply-chain questions. A data-rich platform may require stricter controls even if its capital is attractive. Robotics can combine ordinary commercial uses with technology that officials consider sensitive.
For companies, the proposed lanes would matter before a formal filing. Investors could structure ownership, board rights and data systems around known conditions instead of discovering late that a transaction is unlikely to pass. U.S. firms seeking capital would gain a clearer picture of which partnerships remain possible. The tradeoff is additional compliance cost and continuing uncertainty over how regulators classify new technology.
The report arrives from a university center rather than the government, and its 18-member working group does not decide cases. Its recommendations therefore should be read as a designed alternative to blanket openness or blanket exclusion, not a forecast of what CFIUS will do. Any shift in authority, staffing or statutory purpose would require action beyond UC San Diego.
Selective openness ultimately asks the screening system to do two jobs at once: prevent transfer of capabilities that could harm national security and preserve investment that strengthens production, research or competition. The framework makes that balance visible. Whether it makes decisions faster or more predictable would depend on details the report cannot supply by itself: who monitors the conditions, what counts as a benefit and how regulators respond when a permitted investor breaks the rules.