At the end of 2020, the Max Planck Society quietly withdrew from the CAS-MPG Partner Institute for Computational Biology in Shanghai. This institute had been a  joint venture with the Chinese Academy of Sciences since 2005. The final trigger for this was a collaborative 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 not only exposed the link between the Chinese principal investigator and the Chinese Ministry of Public Security. The article clearly highlighted the role of Western research institutions and companies in enabling China's  upgrading of its biotechnological surveillance apparatus  in Xinjiang.
Questions discussed include the relationship between science and politics, basic and applied research, and the (non-)compliance with ethical standards of scientific research (including informed consent) in international collaborations, especially with partner institutions in authoritarian countries.

Please note: The presentation will be held in German. Slides will mostly be in English, questions and comments can be made in English as well.