Senior Government Minister criticises China, Small Island Strategy, UK Universities and China
A Beijing to Britain briefing
Hello,
What should the relationship between British universities and the Chinese state look like? If you cut away all the bluster and political rhetoric, that was the central question underpinning the Foreign Affairs Committee session I attended this week on ‘UK universities’ engagement with autocracies’. Over a handful of hours, six witnesses, and a number of submitted documents, two themes emerge.
First, British universities have changed the way they engage with Chinese and Chinese institutions fairly quickly, following warnings from an earlier Committee inquiry in 2019 and in light of closer political scrutiny. New oversight mechanisms have been created, staff have been trained to conduct due diligence, and universities have been proactively engaging with the Government’s Research Collaboration Advice Team. However, the way in which we try and categorise this engagement and influence is still too narrow. It doesn’t account for instances such as autocracies sponsoring talent programmes, or funding start-up competitions. Nor does it outline how universities should respond to things like Confucius Institutes.
This leads to the second major theme. Like politicians, businesses and civil society, universities want a clearer steer from the Government about how it is trying to engage or compete with the Chinese state. If coherent and consistent guidelines and an over-arching approach are set out, they can change their behaviour accordingly; what they don’t want is empty rhetoric that changes with the coming of a new Minister for the month. Part of this involves the Government being more forthright about what it views as interference, hence one expert group recommending that the “Government should consider declassifying and publicising anonymised examples where there is evidence that autocratic states have interfered in UK academia.” It’s a fair point and one that should be mirrored across Westminster as a whole, given the vague and generalised warnings we’ve received from security chiefs.
— Sam Hogg, Editor
In this week’s Briefing Note, we look at:
Senior Government official warning over China
New strategy for small island states
British universities and their ties to Chinese companies