British media have reported that at least 17 British private schools have been acquired by Chinese investors, nine of which have a Chinese Communist background. British political circles have warned about the infiltration of the Chinese Communist Party. So, which Chinese tycoons are buying up British schools? And what is the reason behind their interest in these struggling British private schools?
At least nine British private schools have been bought by companies with a Chinese Communist background
The Mail on Sunday revealed that many British private schools in financial crisis due to the new crown Epidemic have become the targets of Chinese investors.
At least 17 British schools have been bought by different Chinese companies, and at least nine of them have been founded or owned by senior Chinese Communist Party officials. One of the Chinese companies has even written publicly that it is acquiring British brand schools in response to the Chinese government’s “One Belt, One Road” plan.
Nigel Farage, leader of the UK’s Leave party, released a video publicly calling on the government to take action to protect the next generation from Chinese brainwashing. Farage named Yang Huiyan, the owner of China’s Bright Scholar Education Group, which has been active in acquiring British educational institutions in recent years, and whose father, Yang Guoqiang, founder of the Beyoncé Group, is a member of the Chinese Communist Party’s Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference.
In the past four years, Bright Scholar has acquired CATS Colleges Holdings Limited, a British education group, and three private schools, including the century-old Bournemouth Collegiate School.
“These acquired British schools have a direct link to the Chinese Communist Party behind them …… They encourage young people to use applications for learning Chinese and to see Xi Jinping telling the wonderful history of China in their textbooks. There is certainly no mention of what happened to the Uighurs (who were oppressed) or the fact that democracy in Hong Kong (was destroyed).” Nigel Farage, leader of the UK’s Leave Party, warned, “This is not just an economic takeover of the West, it’s a cultural takeover.”
The station contacted Farage’s namesake, the Bolshoi Group, and the three purchased British private schools, which did not respond to requests for comment by deadline.
A spokesman for the U.K. Department of Education recently responded that private school owners are expected to promote fundamental British values and that schools cannot promote partisan political views.
Which Chinese tycoons are looking at private schools in the UK?
According to reports, in addition to Boshier Education Group, Chinese company Wanda Group has acquired two British private schools through its asset management company, London & Oxford Group. Wanda’s founder Wang Jianlin has a background in the People’s Liberation Army and has served as a deputy to the National People’s Congress and a member of the Standing Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference. China First Capital Group, which was also named in the report as acquiring two British private schools, is also managed by a senior Communist Party member.
Another Chinese company, Yali Education Group, which acquired two British private schools, wrote on its website that it would launch a “Global Campus” program in 2021 in response to the government’s “One Belt, One Road” call to open no fewer than three schools by 2025. In response to the government’s call for “One Belt, One Road”, the company’s website states that it will launch the “Global Campus Plan” in 2021 and open no less than three overseas campuses by 2025, “forming a China-UK-Asia-Africa campus linkage.
In an interview with the Chinese media in 2019, Jing Hu, president of Yali Education Group, mentioned that his code of conduct is to abide by “the laws of politics, education and economics.” “No matter how international the school is, it is still a Chinese school in the end, and that means we have to focus on the political situation.” He told reporters that when international schools were introduced in Shanghai, “the first thing we did was to set up a party branch and elect a party secretary.”
The 17 British private schools being acquired also include the more than two-hundred-year-old Riddlesworth Hall School, the alma mater of the late Princess Diana, which was wholly acquired in 2015 by China’s Kong International Education Group, whose founder, Kong Lingtao, claims to be the 76th generation descendant of Confucius.
Why are Chinese investors targeting British private schools?
“(This exposure of Chinese acquisition of British schools) is surprising in its scale, although the acquisitions have always been made because British private schools are a weak link and there is a gap in (British) education investment, and the Chinese Communist Party has the opportunity to take advantage of it.” Wang Jianhong, director of Humane China, a human rights organization that has lived in the UK for more than a decade, told the station that during Cameron’s Time as prime minister, the UK drew closer to China in order to revitalize the economy, but “there was too little vigilance against Chinese Communist infiltration. She observed that it was only after the Hong Kong issue and the epidemic in 2019 that British society became more wary of the CCP.
A Ms. An, who works for an education investment venture firm in Shanghai but is not afraid to be interviewed for security reasons, analyzed to this station that the reason Chinese investors are targeting private schools in the UK is firstly that property developers see the value of creating international schools, using the acquisition of old British schools and bringing them to China to establish international branches to attract Chinese Parents who are willing to pay for education. In addition, it is also seeing the demand for premium private school education from wealthy Chinese.
According to the Hurun Research Institute’s 2018 report on China’s multimillionaires, more than 80% of China’s wealthy plan to send their children abroad for education, the highest percentage in the world. Among them, 28.7 percent of children of the wealthy in high school and below preferred to study in the UK, ranking first.
“British brands are also particularly attractive to Chinese parents, (including) a British accent with a sense of aristocracy, a lifestyle, a one-line package (model) from K-12 all the way to a prestigious British school.” Ms. An said.
In terms of relevant data, Chinese money began to buy up British private schools in a big way in 2015. The 2020 census by the Independent School Council (ISC) reported that China has been the largest source of International Students in the UK since exactly 2015, with 10,864 Chinese students enrolled in UK private schools to date, and about 25 percent of them have parents in the UK.
Ms. An also mentioned that the devaluation of the pound after Brexit and the autonomy of the policy after leaving the EU, coupled with the UK government’s support for UK-China education cooperation and the tension between the US and China, are also driving Chinese “money into” the UK.
The UK’s schools are divided into two types: public schools, which cannot be acquired, and private schools, which are divided into three categories: non-profit organizations, consortia and privately run, the first two of which are not easily sold.
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