Prime Minister Boris Johnson has described himself as “fervently Sinophile,” but his own brother, Jo Johnson, is clearly not on the same page as him. A new study led by Jo Johnson suggests that close cooperation between British universities and China in science and technology research has led to financial dependence on China and unknown risks of intellectual property theft, and suggests that the UK should “urgently improve” its oversight mechanisms.
On the eve of the official publication of Joe Johnson’s report on higher Education and scientific research between the UK and China, the Financial Times revealed that the total number of academic articles co-authored by British and Chinese researchers was 750 in 2000, accounting for 1 percent of the UK’s academic article output; by 2019, it had increased to 16,267 , amounting to 11 percent.
The report also shows that more than one-fifth of high-impact research projects in the UK are collaborations with China in at least twenty topics, and many are in the science and technology category. In highly sensitive areas such as automation, telecommunications and materials science, more than 30 percent of the reports are UK-China collaborations.
The report was led by Joe Johnson, the former Secretary of State for Universities and Science and the youngest brother of Prime Minister Johnson. Joe Johnson resigned from his cabinet post as Secretary of State for Universities and Science, and also resigned as a Member of Parliament, less than two months after his older brother became Prime Minister. The Johnson brothers turned against each other because their disagreement on the issue of Brexit was already well known in the British political arena.
The Guardian recently revealed that Prime Minister Johnson described himself as “rabidly pro-China”. His own brother, Joe Johnson, has once again contradicted his older brother in this first comprehensive assessment of UK-China scientific research cooperation.
The report recommends that the British government urgently improve its oversight mechanisms and “keep a close eye on academic links with authoritarian regimes.
Joe Johnson said the UK urgently needs to develop a policy framework for this important relationship in order to deal with rising geopolitical tensions.
The U.S. is currently the largest research partner in the U.K., with 19 percent of U.K. research projects being conducted with Americans. China’s spending on higher education is set to overtake that of the United States by 2022, the report said.
Relations between Britain and China began a golden age under former Prime Minister David Cameron, with close ties from trade and investment to education. Today, the relationship is deteriorating due to events such as huawei‘s 5G equipment, Hong Kong and Xinjiang issues, and the withdrawal of CCTV’s overseas channel, China Global Television Network (CGTN), from the UK.
In the education sector, Chinese capital’s acquisition of prestigious private schools in the UK has also recently raised concerns in British society. Riddlesworth Hall School, the alma mater of the late Princess Diana, was acquired in 2015 by China’s Confucius International Education Group, whose founder, Kong Lingtao, claims to be the 76th generation of Confucius.
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