House Republicans have urged seven US universities to cut ties with a Chinese scholarship programme that lawmakers call a “nefarious mechanism” to steal technology for the Chinese government.

In letters to Dartmouth College, the University of Notre Dame and five other universities, leaders of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party raised concerns about the schools’ partnerships with the China Scholarship Council, a study abroad programme funded by China.

The programme sponsors hundreds of Chinese graduate students every year at US universities. After graduating, they are required to return to China for two years. In the letters sent on Tuesday, Republicans described it as a threat to national security.

“CSC purports to be a joint scholarship programme between US and Chinese institutions; however, in reality it is a CCP-managed technology transfer effort that exploits US institutions and directly supports China’s military and scientific growth,” wrote Republican congressman John Moolenaar, chair of the committee.

Letters were also sent to Temple University, the University of Tennessee and the University of California campuses in Davis, Irvine and Riverside. The committee said it’s opening a review into the programme’s “infiltration” of US universities and demanded records related to the programme from all seven institutions.

The universities’ partnerships with the council bring up to 15 graduate students a year to Dartmouth, along with up to 60 at Temple and 40 at Notre Dame, according to the letters. Some schools split the cost, including Dartmouth, which covers 50 per cent of tuition and provides a stipend to doctoral students.

Among other records, lawmakers are demanding documents showing whether scholarship recipients worked on research funded by the US government.