16 April, The Telegraph, Iain Duncan Smith
In 2017, when Chris Heaton-Harris, then a Government whip, wrote to universities with an anodyne request for information about the content of teaching on Brexit, his letter was described as “sinister” and “McCarthyite”.
But though British universities like to make a noisy fuss about accepting any interference from the democratically elected British Government – that, incidentally, funds and regulates them – they are perfectly happy to accept the most chilling interference from one dictatorial regime abroad.
Already, more than a dozen British universities have established Chinese-funded Confucius Institutes, where they agree not to participate in activities that are inconsistent with the Chinese state’s “missions”. And a 2019 report from the Foreign Affairs Committee found evidence of academics being pressured into cancelling events critical of China. But China is no longer satisfied with mere silence from Western institutions.
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