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UK academics struggle with stricter security on China partnerships
Universities have been accused of generating research that may benefit Beijing’s militaryVice-chancellors and senior leaders at UK universities say they are “in the dark” about tightening national security requirements for Chinese partnerships and are seeking greater clarity on how to navigate regulation of research and commercial work.
The call comes as several top institutions, including Imperial College London and Cambridge and Manchester universities, have been accused by China-focused analysts of generating research within partnerships which may inadvertently benefit the Chinese armed forces.
The think-tank Civitas claimed in a report this month that half of the UK’s 24 Russell Group universities, considered the leading research institutions, had relationships with universities or companies linked to China’s military.
During David Cameron’s premiership, his aspiration to foster a “golden era” of Sino-British relations meant university vice-chancellors were encouraged to pursue research collaborations.
However, bilateral relations have deteriorated in the past five years, fuelled by increasing US hawkishness and concerns that Beijing is expanding its espionage operations in the UK.
The security services issued a stark warning in late 2019 about the risks of research and commercial collaboration with countries such as China and Russia. The advice, from the Centre for the Protection of National Infrastructure, said hostile state actors were targeting universities to steal research and intellectual property “which could be used to help their own military, commercial and authoritarian interests”.
It also suggested that international collaboration allowed hostile state actors “to benefit from research without the need to undertake traditional espionage or cyber compromise”.
The most sensitive collaborations, highlighted by Civitas, involve “dual-use” technologies — such as facial recognition, drone or aerospace technology — which can have both civilian and military applications.
The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office is due to tighten controls again, expanding from May the Academic Technology Approval Scheme (ATAS) checks for courses with military applications to researchers as well as students. It told universities last month there remained a “significant threat to the UK’s national and broader global security” if it did not “go further” in mitigating security risks.
There is a bit of a sense that we’re not entirely sure what’s changing, how it’s changing or why . . . we don’t really know what will be turned down One Russell Group university vice-chancellor Universities have long been required to obtain export control approval for partnerships focused on sensitive technologies or with certain countries. However, vice-chancellors and senior academics, some of whom spoke to the Financial Times on condition of anonymity, said the toughening regime meant more applications involving China were being rejected.
They described a patchy landscape of controls and uneven support that had left them unclear about security requirements and in some cases, missed research opportunities and long delays.
“We do feel we’re working somewhat in the dark,” one Russell Group vice-chancellor said. “There is a bit of a sense that we’re not entirely sure what’s changing, how it’s changing or why . . . we don’t really know what will be turned down.”
Applications had been refused more frequently in the past year, for reasons which were not always clear.
“It would be good to have clearer guidelines,” the vice-chancellor said.
One senior academic from a Russell Group university said that while they “spoke regularly” to trade and security officials about potential collaborations, this level of informal support was relatively unusual among institutions.
Paul Inman, pro vice-chancellor for global engagement at Reading university, said his department was well-versed in navigating controls. Recommended News in-depthUniversity of Cambridge Cambridge caught in crossfire of US-China tech war Increasing scrutiny of universities appeared to overlook the extensive “checks and balances” already in place, he said. “The tightening is already happening.”
Prof Steve Tsang, director of the Soas China Institute in London, said that while this UK government had done a better job of understanding the risks than its predecessors, it was guilty of “trying to have its cake and eat it” by approaching China as both a security threat and a trade partner.
Tsang argued that the government needed to be more explicit about what was allowed. “We live in a country which encourages initiative and we work on the basis that anything that isn’t prohibited is allowed,” he said. “How can we expect your average university leader, who will not know China particularly, and the risk of what a collaboration might imply to them . . . to prevent this from happening?”
Sector organisations and the government have sought to provide clarity. Last October Universities UK, which represents 140 institutions, worked with Whitehall to issue guidance on security threats, including more stringent due diligence for research collaborations. The government also provides guidance on how to develop collaborations while protecting the integrity of research.
“Whilst we will not accept collaborations which compromise our national security, the UK government continues to work with the sector to identify and mitigate the risks of interference,” a spokesperson said.
Academics said that despite the guidance, they remained concerned about conflicting messages encouraging universities to be both outward-looking and guarded. One senior leader at a Russell Group institution said burdensome bureaucratic demands dissuaded staff from going ahead with some projects.
“There’s a fear the rug might be pulled out from under us,” they said. “The things that will suffer are the smaller stuff, linguistic and cultural, because it’s too bloody difficult and tedious to do.”
Tightened ATAS regulations would “limit the pool of intellectual capital” available to universities and had been interpreted as a warning shot, the person said. “It makes it difficult to do the important work we want to do.”
Lord David Willetts, a former minister for universities and science, acknowledged that universities were currently in a “grey area” and suggested the need for a “pre-clearance arrangement” to advise academics on risky collaborations before they submitted export control applications or entered partnerships.
One option, Willetts said, would be to expand the role of the National Cyber Security Centre to handle queries from universities. Or the government could create a “separate trusted agency which everyone knows they can turn to for advice”, he added.
However, others suggested universities needed to be more open about their partnerships. Will Tanner, the director of Conservative think-tank Onward, said “the first hurdle to get over” was “a lack of information and a lack of transparency” around university activities.
“I think it would be sensible for the government to review links between UK universities and Chinese universities and Chinese state-backed companies in order to have a proper understanding before we take necessary steps,” he said. “It may be that we need further legislation in this area.”
He is a friend of China. The only friends of China in America are the rich people, and white privilege do no go to jail. Only poor people go to jail.
I just love this picture!
March 24, 2016
This made me check my utility bills... Luckily it is only 66 dollars. I think the guys with ridiculous bills didn't have a fixed power rate.
It was the same folks wanting to save a buck with the griddy app that supposely cut out the middleman, but like the common theme of Robinhood app which also supposedly cut out the middleman of stock trading fees etc, its betting against the house. You win some at first then you lose big... thats how Vegas affords to keep the lights on
Spot rates for electricity power jumped up to 10000% at peak.
So they may have saved a couple hundred bucks last year but now they have a $5000 electric bill, was it worth it?
In the end in America the losses are always socialized (through bailouts, too big to fail, only letting institutionaled investors buy gamestop stock, etc) while gains are privatized and funneled up to the elite super wealthy...
The quick get rich days of American dream era is now in the rear view mirror
There were some hit with $17000 electric bills from this Texas fiasco, I wonder if any of them will also suicide... imagine you're a single mother of three young children already down on your luck and layed off from you job due to Covid shutdowns, still waiting for that $1400 check Biden promised and student loan forgiveness thats also never coming now you have no way to pay a $17000 debt when you just borrowed $1000 from TitleMax at 700% APR and now cant pay back your debt plus your cars about to get repo'd and OnlyFans isnt paying the bills anymore and in Texas its easy access to get a gun....
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US, Australia, UK, and maybe even Canada would crack down on Chinese scientists in the name of national security. Maybe it is time to return home before any political prosecution.
It comes as Murdoch's Australian newspaper disclosed that Australia's federal Liberal-National government secretly a number of university research grants last December on the grounds that they allegedly represented a China-linked “national security threat”.
On Friday, Australia formed one of three “guests” participating in a virtual meeting of the Group of Seven (G7) leaders, hosted by the UK's Prime Minister Boris Johnson. The so-called D-10 coalition (whose other invitees are South Korea and India) is strategising on an “anti-China front”.
The announcement by oligarch Rupert Murdoch's Times newspaper is part of an escalating assault on academic freedom and is integral to the US-led drive towards a potentially catastrophic military conflict with China.
The allegations that UK university research is being used to assist the Chinese military are made in a report by the right-wing Civitas think-tank, which began life as part of the Thatcherite Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA). Radomir Tylecote and Robert Clark, authors of the report titled “Inadvertently Arming China?”, are attached to the extreme-right of the ruling Conservative Party and the pro-Brexit campaign, heading up the IEAs and the neo-con Henry Jackson Society respectively.
The report claims to have “found” that 15 of the 24 top UK Russell Group universities have links with 29 Chinese “military-linked” universities and corporations. It accuses the UK universities of “unintentionally generating research” that “may be of use” to China's military conglomerates, “including those with activities in the production of Weapons of Mass Destruction...”
The spurious and menacing investigation concludes with an extended note that “None of the academics, researchers, or other staff… discussed in this report are accused of knowingly assisting the development of the Chinese military, of knowingly transferring information to that end, or of committing any breach of their university regulations. Nor are they accused of any other wrongdoing, or breach of national security, or any criminal offence.” It also states that the research queried “may be used solely for non-military ends”, and even that “this report is not necessarily to demonstrate that they risk being used for military purposes...”
Although the report does not specifically name the academics involved, their identities can be easily established. For example, it cites “Three academics from the Bristol Composites Institute [that] have lectured at Zhejiang University” and who “are experts in composite materials that can be made stronger, lighter and resistant to electricity or fire...”
It also lists universities—including Cambridge, Imperial, Queen Mary, Bristol and Edinburgh's Heriot-Watt—it says are involved in research with potential links to the Chinese Communist Party and the Peoples Liberation Army, while asserting that there is “no evidence that any of these universities has done anything wrong.”
Nonetheless, it argues that much of the research identified is “being sponsored by the UK taxpayer” and calls for “a strategic reassessment for new rules for scientific research”, as part of an “urgent reassessment of the security implications of the so-called ‘Golden Era’ policies towards China....”
On this basis, the Times disclosed that the Foreign Office is preparing “enforcement notices” warning up to 200 UK academics that they could be breaching export laws preventing highly sensitive intellectual property “from being handed to hostile states.”
“We could be seeing dozens of academics in courts before long,” an unnamed source told the Times. “If even 10 percent lead to successful prosecutions, we’d be looking at about 20 academics going to jail for helping the Chinese build super-weapons.”
The University of Manchester was forced earlier this month to end its research project with China Electronics Technology Group (CETC) following claims by Tory MP Tom Tugendhat, chairman of the Commons foreign affairs committee, that the state-owned firm’s technology was being used against Muslim Uighurs.
Tugendhat is part of the newly formed China Research Group that is working with right-wing lobby groups and think-tanks to demand the UK's “economic decoupling” from China, using allegations of its human rights abuses. The Times editorial on the Civitas report was titled “Academic Decoupling.”
The right-wing forces mobilised globally behind this latest incarnation of human rights imperialism have no genuine concern as to the repressive apparatus of the Chinese police state, which is directed above all against the working class. They are the representatives of a financial oligarchy that has massively enriched itself on the backs of the super-exploited Chinese masses, following the restoration of capitalism by the Chines Communist Party (CCP).
Though they are reluctant—at this point—to propose measures that might infringe on the City of London's role as the largest renminbi-denominated foreign exchange hub and payments centre outside of China, this campaign is becoming ever more strident. The UK is attempting to march in lockstep with the US, where President Joe Biden has made clear the Democrats will and intensify the economic and military encirclement of China, begun under Obama and continued by Trump.
Earlier this month, the Ofcom media regulator withdrew the license of China Global Television Network (CGTN) to broadcast in the UK, claiming that it was controlled by the CCP. This had been preceded by a campaign against academics and freelance researchers that had appeared on CGTN to criticise US and UK policy against China. The ban also follows the introduction of the UK's new National Security Investment Bill, giving sweeping powers to scrutinise and block deals with Chinese corporations, and Johnson's provocative assertion that COVID-19 is the outcome of Chinese “demented medicine.”
Anti-China propaganda is also the stalking horse for broader political censorship, the primary target of which is left-wing opposition to capitalism, which has been accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Civitas report author Tylecote is the co-founder of the Free Speech Union (FSU), which purports to champion “national academic freedom.” The FSU played a key role in the announcement by Education Secretary Gavin Williamson that he will place “a free speech condition” on universities wishing to access public funding and enable the government's recently created Office for Students (OfS) to appoint a “ ” to investigate alleged breaches.
Journalist Toby Young is another founder of the FSU and was initially the government's first choice to lead the OfS before his attendance at a secret eugenics conference was exposed in the London Student.
The FSU is part of a network sponsored by the Charles Koch Foundation, a prominent funder of neo-fascist libertarian and Republican causes, including the in favour of letting COVID-19 rip through the working class.
Propagandising in favour of the state clampdown on academic freedoms, Edward Lucas in the Daily Mail drew a direct parallel between the anti-China measures and state surveillance of campuses pioneered through the Islamophobic Prevent strategy. These were pioneered on campuses by the Blair government in 2003, following the illegal invasion of Iraq.
“So how might we counter the threat?” he wrote. “Declining sponsorship for chairs in physics is certainly one way. But there are lessons to be learned from the close co-operation between counter-terrorism authorities and universities which has brought considerable success in beating back the radical extremists infesting our campuses.”
UK academics face investigation, prison for China-linked “military” research
Almost 200 leading academics in the UK are being investigated for their “connections” to Chinese universities and “military-linked” firms, with the threat of up to 10 years imprisonment if they are deemed to be breaching “national security.”
It comes as Murdoch's Australian newspaper disclosed that Australia's federal Liberal-National government secretly a number of university research grants last December on the grounds that they allegedly represented a China-linked “national security threat”.
On Friday, Australia formed one of three “guests” participating in a virtual meeting of the Group of Seven (G7) leaders, hosted by the UK's Prime Minister Boris Johnson. The so-called D-10 coalition (whose other invitees are South Korea and India) is strategising on an “anti-China front”.
The announcement by oligarch Rupert Murdoch's Times newspaper is part of an escalating assault on academic freedom and is integral to the US-led drive towards a potentially catastrophic military conflict with China.
The allegations that UK university research is being used to assist the Chinese military are made in a report by the right-wing Civitas think-tank, which began life as part of the Thatcherite Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA). Radomir Tylecote and Robert Clark, authors of the report titled “Inadvertently Arming China?”, are attached to the extreme-right of the ruling Conservative Party and the pro-Brexit campaign, heading up the IEAs and the neo-con Henry Jackson Society respectively.
The report claims to have “found” that 15 of the 24 top UK Russell Group universities have links with 29 Chinese “military-linked” universities and corporations. It accuses the UK universities of “unintentionally generating research” that “may be of use” to China's military conglomerates, “including those with activities in the production of Weapons of Mass Destruction...”
The spurious and menacing investigation concludes with an extended note that “None of the academics, researchers, or other staff… discussed in this report are accused of knowingly assisting the development of the Chinese military, of knowingly transferring information to that end, or of committing any breach of their university regulations. Nor are they accused of any other wrongdoing, or breach of national security, or any criminal offence.” It also states that the research queried “may be used solely for non-military ends”, and even that “this report is not necessarily to demonstrate that they risk being used for military purposes...”
Although the report does not specifically name the academics involved, their identities can be easily established. For example, it cites “Three academics from the Bristol Composites Institute [that] have lectured at Zhejiang University” and who “are experts in composite materials that can be made stronger, lighter and resistant to electricity or fire...”
It also lists universities—including Cambridge, Imperial, Queen Mary, Bristol and Edinburgh's Heriot-Watt—it says are involved in research with potential links to the Chinese Communist Party and the Peoples Liberation Army, while asserting that there is “no evidence that any of these universities has done anything wrong.”
Nonetheless, it argues that much of the research identified is “being sponsored by the UK taxpayer” and calls for “a strategic reassessment for new rules for scientific research”, as part of an “urgent reassessment of the security implications of the so-called ‘Golden Era’ policies towards China....”
On this basis, the Times disclosed that the Foreign Office is preparing “enforcement notices” warning up to 200 UK academics that they could be breaching export laws preventing highly sensitive intellectual property “from being handed to hostile states.”
“We could be seeing dozens of academics in courts before long,” an unnamed source told the Times. “If even 10 percent lead to successful prosecutions, we’d be looking at about 20 academics going to jail for helping the Chinese build super-weapons.”
The University of Manchester was forced earlier this month to end its research project with China Electronics Technology Group (CETC) following claims by Tory MP Tom Tugendhat, chairman of the Commons foreign affairs committee, that the state-owned firm’s technology was being used against Muslim Uighurs.
Tugendhat is part of the newly formed China Research Group that is working with right-wing lobby groups and think-tanks to demand the UK's “economic decoupling” from China, using allegations of its human rights abuses. The Times editorial on the Civitas report was titled “Academic Decoupling.”
The right-wing forces mobilised globally behind this latest incarnation of human rights imperialism have no genuine concern as to the repressive apparatus of the Chinese police state, which is directed above all against the working class. They are the representatives of a financial oligarchy that has massively enriched itself on the backs of the super-exploited Chinese masses, following the restoration of capitalism by the Chines Communist Party (CCP).
Though they are reluctant—at this point—to propose measures that might infringe on the City of London's role as the largest renminbi-denominated foreign exchange hub and payments centre outside of China, this campaign is becoming ever more strident. The UK is attempting to march in lockstep with the US, where President Joe Biden has made clear the Democrats will and intensify the economic and military encirclement of China, begun under Obama and continued by Trump.
Earlier this month, the Ofcom media regulator withdrew the license of China Global Television Network (CGTN) to broadcast in the UK, claiming that it was controlled by the CCP. This had been preceded by a campaign against academics and freelance researchers that had appeared on CGTN to criticise US and UK policy against China. The ban also follows the introduction of the UK's new National Security Investment Bill, giving sweeping powers to scrutinise and block deals with Chinese corporations, and Johnson's provocative assertion that COVID-19 is the outcome of Chinese “demented medicine.”
Anti-China propaganda is also the stalking horse for broader political censorship, the primary target of which is left-wing opposition to capitalism, which has been accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Civitas report author Tylecote is the co-founder of the Free Speech Union (FSU), which purports to champion “national academic freedom.” The FSU played a key role in the announcement by Education Secretary Gavin Williamson that he will place “a free speech condition” on universities wishing to access public funding and enable the government's recently created Office for Students (OfS) to appoint a “ ” to investigate alleged breaches.
Journalist Toby Young is another founder of the FSU and was initially the government's first choice to lead the OfS before his attendance at a secret eugenics conference was exposed in the London Student.
The FSU is part of a network sponsored by the Charles Koch Foundation, a prominent funder of neo-fascist libertarian and Republican causes, including the in favour of letting COVID-19 rip through the working class.
Propagandising in favour of the state clampdown on academic freedoms, Edward Lucas in the Daily Mail drew a direct parallel between the anti-China measures and state surveillance of campuses pioneered through the Islamophobic Prevent strategy. These were pioneered on campuses by the Blair government in 2003, following the illegal invasion of Iraq.
“So how might we counter the threat?” he wrote. “Declining sponsorship for chairs in physics is certainly one way. But there are lessons to be learned from the close co-operation between counter-terrorism authorities and universities which has brought considerable success in beating back the radical extremists infesting our campuses.”