A report has found that Beijing has established at least 75 clandestine “influence outposts” across the United Kingdom.
While the leftist Labour Party government continues to attempt to curry favour with the communist regime, China is seeking to undermine British sovereignty, with covert operations being conducted to wage influence wars on UK soil, a report from the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China has found.
The IPAC report identified at least 75 active CCP influence operations operating within British universities, businesses, and Chinese migrant communities, The Times of London reported.
Although many of the groups attempt to portray themselves as merely cultural or community organisations, the report found that they actually serve to stifle critics of the communist government, influence debate in Britain, and gain access to political institutions.
Some of the groups have also been tied to the targeting of political dissidents, a key area of concern given that many Hong Kong activists fled to the UK following the imposition of communist rule over the former British colony.
The main area of operation appears to be talent recruitment firms, in which state-funded Chinese groups target scientists or other researchers with access to sensitive technology or intellectual property. China has long been accused of targeting British academics.
Previously, UK universities faced accusations of partnering with Chinese military researchers to build weapons of “mass destruction” and to develop nuclear weapons technologies. The UK government has since admitted that there appears to be a “correlation” between the reliance on tuition from Chinese students and the amount of technology transfers from British universities to Beijing.
The report comes amid accusations against the government of Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer kowtowing to China, including by recently approving the construction of a Chinese “mega embassy” in central London, despite concerns over potential spying.
Once completed, the building would be the largest CCP embassy in Europe. Critics have warned that its planned location, on the site of the old Royal Mint, could give China access to sensitive underground communication cables linking the financial centres of Canary Wharf and the City of London.
An official visit to Beijing for Starmer was announced practically immediately after the embassy was signed off, and Starmer will be the first British Prime Minister to visit China since Theresa May in 2018. It is said visits have been blocked by China over London’s refusal to this point to approve the mega embassy.
The leftist UK government has previously faced claims of being overly deferential to China, including by refusing to label the authoritarian regime in Beijing as a strategic threat during an investigation into two British men alleged to have acted as spies for the Chinese.
The government has also come under fire for agreeing to hand over the Chagos Islands — which house a joint U.S.-UK military base — to the increasingly China-aligned East African nation of Mauritius. The deal has been put on hold after President Donald Trump lambasted the agreement as an act of “great stupidity“.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Starmer is set to become the first British leader in nearly eight years to travel to Beijing this week, in a bid to deepen trade links between the UK and China. Starmer will seek to repair ties which were frayed following the brutal crackdown against pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong and the Chinese coronavirus crisis.
Commenting on the report, IPAC senior analyst Chung Ching Kowng said: “These stations have been in the UK for decades and constitute the CCP’s ‘whole of society’ approach to infiltration. It has bent UK institutions and individuals to the will of CCP.”
“While the prime minister prepares to depart for Beijing, this is the domestic reality, which only stands to intensify if the mega embassy gets built.”
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