CHINA
- China not only seeks influence at an institutional level but will also target individual academics who focus on China, seeking to ensure that they act in the CCP's best interests either through professional inducements or, if that doesn't work, by intimidation.
- China appears prepared to use levers, such as research funding and travel opportunities, to cultivate relationships with academics, and to encourage them to change their research direction or course content in line with CCP objectives. We heard from the External Experts that this can be very direct—Professor Steve Tsang told us that, within six months of him taking up a new appointment at SOAS, a political counsellor from the Chinese embassy approached him, offering him anything he wanted in an attempt to curry favour: "It is as blatant as that."[1]
- If positive incentives do not work, the Chinese government is willing to apply pressure in other ways. The JIC Chair told us that they were aware of:
examples of intimidation, in different ways, sometimes with the Vice Chancellor getting a phone call, sometimes at student body level, to try to discourage universities from allowing speakers on issues like Tibet or Xinjiang.[2]
Lord Patten told the Foreign Affairs Committee that, when, in the early days of his tenure as Chancellor of the University of Oxford, the Dalai Lama was invited to speak by the university's Buddhist Society, "within 48 hours I had the then-Chinese ambassador on the phone saying, 'This is a disgraceful insult to the People's Republic of China', and so on".[3] He refused to intervene. On a different occasion, the Vice Chancellor of the University of Oxford was asked by the Chinese embassy to prevent Lord Patten from visiting Hong Kong; she also refused.[4]
- Chinese visas are also used as leverage. Professor Tsang stated: "Research for academics entering China is weaponised. You say something that they don't like, they deny you a visa."[5] As visas are essential to the academic research of many UK-based China scholars, this makes them a powerful lever that can be used to deter criticism of the CCP and its policies. In October 2020, the Chief of SIS told the Committee:
If you are an academic and you are specialising in China, and your entire academic life is focused on China, the threat of not allowing you to travel to the country of your academic [focus] is a very powerful threat.[6]
- ↑ Oral evidence—Professor Steve Tsang (SOAS), 9 May 2019.
- ↑ Oral evidence—JIO, *** October 2020.
- ↑ 'Security Services fear the march on universities of Beijing's spies', The Times, 27 October 2019.
- ↑ Charles Parton, 'China-UK Relations: Where to Draw the Border Between Influence and Interference', Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), 20 February 2019.
- ↑ Oral evidence—Professor Steve Tsang (SOAS), 9 May 2019. Professor Tsang has himself been denied a visa by China in the past.
- ↑ Oral evidence—SIS, *** October 2020.
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