Leading British universities have been influenced by Chinese agents, with diplomatic and unofficial pressure resulting in censorship on campus, according to a Channel 4 documentary.
The Dispatches documentary, Secrets and Power: China in the UK, alleges that the University of Nottingham closed its School of Contemporary Chinese Studies in 2016 in response to pressure from Beijing.
The former head of the institute, Steve Tsang, has openly criticized the Chinese Communist party (CCP) on several occasions, but said that university management asked him not to speak to the media during Xi Jinping’s (習近平) visit to the UK in 2015.
Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
The saga at the University of Nottingham, which denies that the School of Contemporary Chinese Studies was closed for political reasons, is one of many examples of alleged Chinese influence in the UK made in the new episode of Dispatches.
The programme also looks at Imperial College London, where it claims a leading computer science professor collaborated with researchers at a Chinese university to publish papers on the use of artificial intelligence weaponry that could be used to benefit the Chinese military.
It reports that Guo Yike, the founder of Imperial College’s Data Science Institute, has written eight papers with collaborators from Shanghai University on developing ways to use AI to control fleets of drone ships.
In 2019, Guo signed a research deal with JARI, a Chinese research institute with links to the Chinese military. The research deal was terminated in 2021 and Imperial College said that it returned the funding associated with the partnership.
Guo said his papers were “basic” and “written to help expand our existing base of scientific or technological knowledge rather than immediately solve specific real-world problems.” He added: “The papers include viewpoints that can benefit societies worldwide.”
The documentary also claimed to have uncovered a suspected Chinese spying attempt targeted at Hong Kong activists in the UK.
Finn Lau, a UK-based activist from Hong Kong who is subject to a HK$1m bounty from the Hong Kong police, says he was approached by a man by the name of Richard Vong, who claimed to be a journalist for the Toronto Guardian. On a video call, a clip of which was exclusively shared with the Guardian, Vong questioned Lau about his work with a campaign group, Global Detwin with China, which encourages UK cities to sever “twin cities” arrangements with Chinese cities because of human rights concerns.
The editor of the Toronto Guardian told Dispatches that nobody recalled Richard Vong had ever worked there. On the call with Lau, “Vong” declined to say how he spelled his surname, describing it as a “very personal” matter.
The Dispatches team used facial recognition software to track down the supposed journalist, and assert he is actually an American man who had worked as an English teacher in Shanghai.
The Chinese embassy in London said claims about suspected spying were “sheer disinformation.” It also denied that it had ever attempted to interfere with British universities.
Martijn Rasser, a former senior intelligence officer at the CIA interviewed by Dispatches, said: “Beijing is acting with impunity in the United Kingdom and is rubbing the UK’s face into it.”
In Taiwan there are two economies: the shiny high tech export economy epitomized by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) and its outsized effect on global supply chains, and the domestic economy, driven by construction and powered by flows of gravel, sand and government contracts. The latter supports the former: we can have an economy without TSMC, but we can’t have one without construction. The labor shortage has heavily impacted public construction in Taiwan. For example, the first phase of the MRT Wanda Line in Taipei, originally slated for next year, has been pushed back to 2027. The government
July 22 to July 28 The Love River’s (愛河) four-decade run as the host of Kaohsiung’s annual dragon boat races came to an abrupt end in 1971 — the once pristine waterway had become too polluted. The 1970 event was infamous for the putrid stench permeating the air, exacerbated by contestants splashing water and sludge onto the shore and even the onlookers. The relocation of the festivities officially marked the “death” of the river, whose condition had rapidly deteriorated during the previous decade. The myriad factories upstream were only partly to blame; as Kaohsiung’s population boomed in the 1960s, all household
Allegations of corruption against three heavyweight politicians from the three major parties are big in the news now. On Wednesday, prosecutors indicted Hsinchu County Commissioner Yang Wen-ke (楊文科) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), a judgment is expected this week in the case involving Hsinchu Mayor Ann Kao (高虹安) of the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) and former deputy premier and Taoyuan Mayor Cheng Wen-tsan (鄭文燦) of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) is being held incommunicado in prison. Unlike the other two cases, Cheng’s case has generated considerable speculation, rumors, suspicions and conspiracy theories from both the pan-blue and pan-green camps.
Stepping inside Waley Art (水谷藝術) in Taipei’s historic Wanhua District (萬華區) one leaves the motorcycle growl and air-conditioner purr of the street and enters a very different sonic realm. Speakers hiss, machines whir and objects chime from all five floors of the shophouse-turned- contemporary art gallery (including the basement). “It’s a bit of a metaphor, the stacking of gallery floors is like the layering of sounds,” observes Australian conceptual artist Samuel Beilby, whose audio installation HZ & Machinic Paragenesis occupies the ground floor of the gallery space. He’s not wrong. Put ‘em in a Box (我們把它都裝在一個盒子裡), which runs until Aug. 18, invites