Chinese involvement in UK university research is ‘inadequately’ monitored

A new report recommends establishing a Government organisation to monitor and assess university sponsorship

Credit: themotioncloud/iStockphoto 

Chinese involvement in UK university research is “inadequately” monitored, a think tank has said. 

The report, “Inadvertently Arming China?” by Civitas, found 15 of the 24 Russell Group universities have research relationships with Chinese military-linked manufacturers and universities. It hopes to draw “attention to the little-analysed but pervasive presence of Chinese military-linked conglomerates and universities in the sponsorship of high-technology research centres in many leading UK universities”.

It found that “the methods by which the UK monitors and controls Chinese involvement in UK university research are, we suggest, inadequate”. 

The report found that companies sponsoring UK-based research centres include China’s largest weapons manufacturers, such as producers of strike fighter engines, intercontinental ballistic missiles, nuclear warheads, stealth aircraft, military drones, tanks, military-use metals and materials, and navy ships.

“At its simplest, for the UK government and taxpayer to fund and assist the technological development and possibly the force-projection capabilities of the military of the People’s Republic of China is not in the British national interest,” the authors of the report, Radomir Tylecote, director of the Defence and Security for Democracy (DSD) unit at Civitas and Robert Clark, defence fellow at the Henry Jackson Society, said. 

They add: “China is demonstrating rapid technological military development and growing force-projection capabilities. To risk financing and enabling these developments suggests a lack of strategic coordination.”  

One example of findings – that “may be of use to China’s military conglomerates” – included research into a password-breaking tool at a UK university with a leading Chinese military-linked university which is under US sanctions, known to specialise in information security, and whose staff have been charged with espionage.

The report recommends a new Government organisation is established which is similar to the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS). Its role would include monitoring and assessment of university sponsorship. 

It comes after The Telegraph revealed that three Chinese spies who falsely posed as journalists have been expelled from Britain in the past year. 

The trio are understood to be intelligence officers for Beijing’s Ministry of State Security (MSS) and arrived in the country on journalism visas under the fake pretext of working in the media.

A senior Whitehall source confirmed that the three spies each purported to “work for three different Chinese media agencies,” which have not been named, and that they “all set foot in the UK” in the past 12 months.