As another academic year begins, the hallowed walls of universities are filled with anticipation, whether for the bright-eyed fresher or the veteran don. Yet we must remove our rose-tinted spectacles. If today’s universities remain complacent, they risk being captured by hostile forces. It is not just the malevolent marriage between EDI (Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion) agendas and woke ideology that degrades our elite institutions from within. There is, and has long been, a third person in this marriage: China.

MI5’s recent espionage alert rightly caused alarm. When agencies of the Chinese Communist party (CCP) fund academic research in British universities and funnel research findings back to Beijing, it is no laughing matter. This, however, is hardly news. For decades, universities nationally and globally have been under threat from the influence of the Chinese government, funnelled through Chinese students and espionage. How can the country’s best minds and institutions have been so naïve? And why have we been so slow to call out China’s behaviour?

Western academic institutions have long been targeted by the tentacles of the CCP. With hundreds of thousands of Chinese students enrolled in higher education, it is unsurprising that not everyone is there out of a love of learning. In the late 1970s, as Chinese students began to study in the West, the CCP created the blandly named Chinese Students and Scholars Association (CSSA). Beijing claimed that the organisation would help Chinese scholars acclimatise to their new environments through hosting social activities and promoting Chinese culture.

CSSA may sound mundane, but the reality is more sinister. Beijing wanted information: about what Chinese students were studying; about what Chinese scholars were teaching; and about whether others within universities were promoting views that go against the CCP. With most universities now having their own CSSA chapter, these organisations are anathema to academic freedom, debate, and freedom of speech, the lifeblood of any university. Over the last decade, reports have proliferated of CSSA chapters colluding to stifle so-called ‘anti-China’ speech, such as by no-platforming speakers on the Uyghur genocide and criticising teaching material concerning Taiwan.

MI5’s alert reveals what Britain has long known but refused to confront: UK universities are being coopted by China’s political and economic coercion. The People’s Liberation Army’s ‘three warfares’ strategy – wherein Beijing can shape its security environment without firing a shot – comprises not just legal warfare but psychological and public opinion warfare, in which information is manipulated to build support for China’s positions and erode support for the West.

In 2024, Chinese students brought in over £5.5 billion in fees across nearly 160 British universities, accounting for approximately one-tenth of all university income. This has hardly gone unnoticed by Beijing. Moreover, for some institutions and academics, accepting money from a donor disguising itself under the banal banner of the China General Technology Institute (a front company for China’s Ministry of State Security) is a no-brainer, giving scant thought to what the donor might do with the resultant research.

All of this must stop. Britain must make clear where we stand, but waiting for a China policy has become akin to waiting for Godot. In 2023, the then foreign secretary, James Cleverly, pledged to end the £27 million government funding towards the notorious Confucius Institutes. The institutes, globally present from Bologna to Bogotá, claim to ‘promote Chinese language and culture’ through teaching Mandarin. But they are another pernicious arm of the Chinese party-state. Criticising the CCP’s policies towards Hong Kong, Taiwan, Xinjiang, for instance, is verboten. Yet, whilst the Sunak government initially sought to close all thirty institutes in the UK – more than in any other country – it eventually opted to suspend the subsidies. Ultimately, London feared Beijing’s threats to terminate the British Council’s operations in China.

Under Starmer, Britain’s China policy plunged into non-existence, as London favoured appeasement over policy. An audit reviewing Britain’s approach towards its fourth-largest trading partner was shelved. These two inglorious years saw green lights given to red-flag arrangements, granting Beijing yet another victory. We now face the damning consequences of the geopolitically illiterate Chagos Islands deal and the construction of a Chinese super-embassy in London.

Universities in the UK are confronting a litany of financial, pedagogical and ideological crises. Yet it is about time that they take a long look in the mirror. The purpose of a university is to teach students how – and not what – to think, as students and academics collectively pursue truth. Yet, when agents of a hostile power are involved, and the goings-on inside a laboratory or an Oxford don’s room during a tutorial become transmitted to the adversary, this quest for truth can no longer be pursued. For in Beijing’s eyes, when it comes to Taiwan or human rights abuses in Hong Kong, there is no debate.

Amidst the maelstrom of a new academic year, British universities, citizens and the Burnham government must face reality. Research funding may hardly be abundant (especially on this side of the Atlantic), and the finances of some universities have admittedly never looked so unhealthy. Yet, the solution is not to do as so many institutions are doing. Universities must be scrupulous in the students they admit and in scrutinising where research funds originate from. They must not fall prostrate before the allure of dirty money. Today’s universities face enough challenges, from bloated student numbers to cash-cow degree programmes to the embedded rot of wokery and EDI. These are not going away. But we must now add China to the list, for there is no place for Chinese espionage within British universities, whether from external institutions or otherwise.