Ministers must do more to combat Chinese influence on British campuses

This article was written by Calista Toner, Policy Fellow 2023-2024, and originally appeared in ConservativeHome. The views in this article are the authors own.

In modern diplomacy, soft power has become ever-more important. No longer can a country’s influence be measured by military might alone. We now live in a world where a nation can attain status through the sale and exporting of its art and culture.

The use of such soft power is not inherently good or bad. It is a tool, used by many countries across the world. American cinema, the British Royal Family, French wine and cheese, and even Eurovision all increase the stature of their respective home countries in the global community.

However, some malign actors can manipulate this tool to their own ends, with serious consequences. A perfect example of this unhappier trend is China.

Whether through blatant intimidation of staff and students on British university campuses, attempts to coerce university administrations through hefty donations, or the development of over 25 Confucius Institutes (more than any other country in the Western world), Beijing is putting in a global effort to build its indirect influence here in the UK.

Officially, the Confucius Institutes are centres designed to promote the Chinese language and culture abroad and are hosted primarily in cooperation with various educational institutions. My university, the University of Glasgow, has its own CI in the historic main campus building. The Centre primarily hosts language courses, but also offers scholarship schemes and lecture series.

The one at my university recently held a talk entitled “Managing Humanity’s Insanity: Revisioning our place in Nature through Classical Chinese Philosophy”; the description criticizes right-wing, libertarian, and neo-liberal ideas. They also have several scholarship opportunities on offer, one of which is simply defined as a “Chinese Government Scholarship”.

While the official description given on the University of Glasgow website states that the “aim of the Confucius Institute…is to promote an understanding of contemporary China”, there is significant concern that at least some of these centres have been used for the purposes of propaganda, pressuring host institutions, and even spying on students.

Another major concern is unclear funding, with much of it coming from Chinese Government-backed resources.

Advocates for these centres claim that, despite funding concerns, there is no strong evidence to support claims that they meddle in educational affairs of their host countries, and that as they are no longer directly supervised by the Chinese Ministry of Education they therefore must be truly independent.

But this is improbable. Most CI’s do not include the “Three T’s” in teaching – that is, they do not mention Tibet, Taiwan, or Tiananmen Square in any of their materials. A leaked internal party document from 2013 clearly demonstrates the CCP has historically held “hostility to the ‘universal values’ espoused by liberal democracies”.

In 2019, Human Rights Watch said that these centres often act as extensions of the Chinese government, and that, in fact, they can become engaged in the pressuring of host universities to silence or censor talks on topics considered controversial in Beijing. Their staff, despite being employed in the United Kingdom, undergo political vetting by the Chinese Government and must vow to follow Chinese law whilst abroad.

These centres, and Chinese soft power in general, have largely been given free reign across our university campuses. This can be seen in Scotland, where Edinburgh University accepted at least 12 million pounds from groups with affiliations to the Chinese military. Are we to pretend that these big donors have no material influence over the University?

Our approach to these organisations is outdated. We cannot continue to live under the flawed and false pretence that China, or any groups associated with it, have unalloyed friendly intentions.

Britain’s academic institutions are sacred: they train the next generation of business and political leaders, and our future workforce. Universities shape our culture and our future. We cannot become bought out by foreign powers and interests – particularly not those who fundamentally oppose the basic principles of our western liberal democracy.

The reality is that these CIs provide a foothold for China to have a very real impact on campus. They are the friendly face of your stereotypical high school mean girl: affected innocence which belies nefarious intent. A 2019 Foreign Affairs Committee report concluded that there was “evidence of academics being pressured into cancelling events critical of China”.

That same year, a Chinese student was photographed in Edinburgh holding a sign which supported the freedom of Hong Kong. He was later photographed at the airport with his mother. Both images went viral on Weibo, with posts calling for him to be beaten to death. A Hong Kong student at the University of Sheffield reported that, while handing out pro-democracy materials, “a glass was thrown at one of my friends and one of our flags was broken… we were terrified… we are sure we will be on watch lists when we go home”.

In 2020, Huawei helped fund a report, published by Jesus College Cambridge, which advocated “for reforms to the global governance of telecommunications standards”. During the pandemic, many universities likewise agreed to comply with censorship laws in China for their international students.

But this culture of intimidation does not only impact students: speaking with the Intelligence and Security Committee, Professor Steve Tsang said that: “You say something they don’t like, they deny you a visa”. This was confirmed by the chief of the Secret Intelligence Service, who said if “your entire academic life is focused on China, the threat of not allowing you to travel to the country…is…very powerful”.

A recent independent audit in Whitehall described how “extremely high risk” sensitive information could be leaked to Beijing. China actively works to recruit talent from our university campuses; British academics engage in joint research projects which often directly (or indirectly) benefit Chinese defence developments.

The presence of these Confucius Institutes in our country legitimises actions taken by the Chinese government on our campuses, such as threatening our academics and our students, buying out our intellectual talent, and even pressuring the heads of these historic institutions. Rishi Sunak, in his initial campaign to become Conservative party leader, recognised the symbolic power of these CIs and vowed to ban such organisations.

However, as pointed out by many of his critics, in a free country it is incredibly difficult (and appropriately so) to ban such groups. So what should we do?

The Henry Jackson Society has made several recommendations: that we should introduce legislation to remove CIs from universities; an immediate investigation regarding the legality of their staff recruitment processes; and that the Government should work with other countries that speak Mandarin, especially Taiwan, to develop new Chinese culture and language programmes.

Sunak oversaw the passage of their 2023 National Security Act, which, in his own words, “brings together vital new measures to protect our national security. That includes creating a foreign influence registration scheme through the act specifically to tackle covert influence in the UK”.

With China beginning to flex its political muscle, it’s time to go further. We cannot afford to lose this fight for our values.