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........

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