Funding from China “may pose” a risk to the UK’s university system and research could be being “exploited by the Chinese military in a way the researchers could never have envisaged”, a paper from a right-of-centre think-tank in the UK has claimed.
Civitas’s The Strategic Dependence of UK Universities on China – and where should they turn next? report found that between 2017 and 2022/23, 46 UK higher education institutions received between £122-£156 million from Chinese sources.
The calculations are based on FOIs received from 46 UK universities.
Researchers note that none of those mentioned in the report are accused of knowingly contributing to the development of China’s military or military industries. Instead any sponsorship and research relationships have been entered into in good faith and in the belief that the scientific outputs will have purely civil ends, they said.
