“It’s not about putting up barriers around entire institutions or fields of research,” Dowden said.
“However, it is fair to check who has access to the frontiers of research in the most sensitive disciplines.
“Similarly, we must ensure that the dependence of certain universities on foreign funding does not become a dependence by which they could be influenced, exploited, even coerced, or even find themselves vulnerable to the fallout of tensions increased geopolitics. »
A report released last year by the British parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee – which oversees the work of the country’s spy agencies – warned that British academic institutions “provide a rich feeding ground for China to to exert political influence in the United Kingdom and economic advantage over the United Kingdom.
But the cross-party committee said the government had failed to advise institutions on how to prevent intellectual property theft and coercion of individual academics.
He urged ministers to impose greater transparency on foreign donations to universities.
In response, the government stressed that the UK and China have “common objectives in the research and academic sectors”, but committed to “evaluating the measures currently in place and identifying what the government could or should do more.”
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