- The Liberal universities around the world, especially in English-speaking countries, earn millions of dollars every year from Chinese students.
- This huge spending capacity of the Chinese students influences what these universities say and publish.
- China is using the spending capacity of Chinese students and Confucius institutes to influence the intellectual circles.
- The security establishment in countries around the world needs to be very careful, and keep a close eye on all the people dealing with China.
In the last few decades, China has used its economic influence and the capacity of its international students to pay hefty fees to universities to buy positive coverage from media, academia, and intellectual circles. The Liberal universities around the world, especially in English-speaking countries like the US, UK, and Australia, earn millions of dollars every year from Chinese students. And, this huge spending capacity of the Chinese students influences what these universities say and publish.
The latest example of this is a proposed research in the University of Birmingham, a public research university in the United Kingdom, that gets millions of dollars from the government.
China Research Group (CRG) campaigns against Chinese human rights abuses, such as Uyghur oppression, and seeks to expose economic and infrastructure threats. The formal proposal for the thesis by Rong Wei (an academician in the University of Birmingham) describes the CRG as having played a major role in the social and political construction of China as the new international pariah.
Also read: How China capitalized on Oxford University’s love for money to expand influence in the university
Sir Iain Duncan Smith, Tory MP and IPAC member, called for an investigation into the grant. “It is unbelievable that a British government can sponsor a research project whose purpose is to denigrate legitimate parliamentary research, in IPAC’s case across 22 countries, both on the Left and the Right”, he told the Sunday Telegraph.
The CRG, which is led by Tory MP Tom Tugendhat, was established in April 2020 after controversies over the Covid-19 virus and Huawei. He and Iain Smith were among nine Britons and four groups put under sanctions by Beijing. In response, the Chinese ambassador was banned from the Palace of Westminster.
University of Westminster is not the first one to be compromised. Before this, various cases revealed that most of the top institutes of higher education like University of Oxford, Harvard and MIT, especially the Humanities department of these universities, are compromised.
Previously, an investigation by Guardian revealed that an Oxford academic head, Alan Hudson, bestowed a “meaningless” University qualification upon a Hong Kong businessman, Chan King Wai, with Chinese Communist Party (CCP) links at a high-profile ceremony in Shanghai last year.
Hudson awarded the title “Belt and Road Academician from Oxford University”, which itself suggests that Wai has been a major contributor to Xi Jinping’s flagship Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Oxford University gives out only a few such honorary degrees at the Encaenia ceremony every year. Therefore, the qualification bestowed upon Wai was an important development.
Hudson, who has now retired from Oxford University, has confessed that the title given to Wai is “meaningless”. He said, “I looked up the meaning of ‘academician’ and it is absolutely meaningless, it means anybody involved with the university, of any description. So I said there you go, we can put that on the certificate. In recognition of his contributions to the programme.”
In the US, on the other hand, Confucius Institutes (Chinese-run language and cultural schools) have become a major issue. Last year, a report by an investigation arm of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee revealed that Hanban, which oversees these Chinese language and culture institutes on campuses all over the world, had sent in US$15.4 million into the United States directly.
The Confucius Institutes are infamous for censorship on sensitive topics like Tibet, Xinjiang, and Taiwan, and are therefore seen as parts of the Chinese propaganda war. Moreover, premier American Universities, including Harvard and Yale, are also facing US Education Department investigation into allegations of failing to report “hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign gifts and contracts” from China and other countries.
China is using the spending capacity of Chinese students and Confucius institutes (sponsored by Chinese state departments), to influence the intellectual circles (academia, media, and publishing). The security establishment in countries around the world needs to be very careful, and keep a close eye on all the people dealing with China.