University scientists work with Chinese
Universities are partnered with Chinese institute that is ‘front’ for military development, say experts
Scientists at Britain’s leading universities, including Cambridge, Edinburgh and Manchester, have worked on projects with staff at China’s nuclear weapons research institution, The Daily Telegraph can disclose. This newspaper found that British academics have published dozens of papers alongside scientists employed at the institution, which is on a US sanctions list due to its research into developing Beijing’s nuclear arsenal.
As a line on a CV, it sounds straightforward enough: the Beijing Computational Science Research Centre. Housed in a glass, oval building in Z Park, known as “China’s Silicon Valley”, the centre has its own gym and lecture halls, houses part of a supercomputer and boasts of its many foreign university partnerships. It is easy to see why Gilberto Teobaldi, now a senior British government scientist, might happily take up an offer to become an “associate member”.
But this shiny office is more than a hub for computer geeks.
It is run by China’s sole developer of nuclear weapons, the Chinese Academy of Engineering Physics (CAEP), an institution that is focused on advanced weapons research and supervised by China’s Central Military Council. The academy and its subsidiaries, including the Beijing computer science centre, are on a UK sanctions list due to the high risk of their work aiding military research in China.
The centre tends not to play up these military links in its recruitment of foreign scientists. Prof Teobaldi became an “associate member” in 2016. Since then he has worked with its scientists and published at least seven scientific papers listing him as one of its researchers, while also being employed by Liverpool University. In 2018, he also became a “group leader” in a British government laboratory.
Research by reveals that Prof Teobaldi is just one of many UK scientists who have forged links with China’s nuclear weapons laboratory.
Scientists working at the CAEP and its subsidiaries, including a defence laboratory devoted to “shock wave and detonation physics”, have published dozens of papers with British scientists, many of which make use of British government grants or facilities. The UK scientists involved in these projects argue that they are purely focused on basic science or its civilian applications, but others argue the line is not always clear.
“These things are inextricably intertwined and extremely hard to disentangle,” said Jeffrey Lewis, an expert at the Centre for Nonproliferation Studies at Middlebury College in Vermont. Charles Parton, a former Foreign Office official and a China expert, said: “It is an extremely bad idea to co-operate with an institute that develops nuclear weapons.”
The work done by Prof Teobaldi’s group at the UK government-run Rutherford Appleton Laboratory includes research on nuclear and solar energy. As a senior UK scientist, Prof Teobaldi’s work has benefited from taxpayer-funded grants totalling more than £600,000 and his papers have made repeated use of Britain’s Archer supercomputer.
The Science and Technology Facilities Council, which runs the lab, says it supports “international collaborations that are legitimate, lawful and responsible, and operate within the framework set out by government”.
The research “relates to fundamental science using theoretical models to find sustainable materials for civil applications”, a spokesman said, adding that Prof Teobaldi was not involved in the work on nuclear energy carried out by a member of his team. Prof Teobaldi is listed as affiliated with the research centre on several papers published in 2020, but the council says his links with the centre ended in late 2018, just months after he joined the UK lab.
Liverpool University, where Prof Teobaldi is now an honorary research fellow, says it has “a robust set of policies and procedures in place in relation to due diligence, ethics governance, and IP protection”.
Another senior UK scientist with links to the CAEP is Simon Redfern, formerly head of the Earth Science department at Cambridge University.
Prof Redfern studies how minerals behave in extreme environments such as volcanoes. His work has benefited from substantial government funding, and in 2016 he shared a sneaky selfie while inside a British government facility called Diamond Light Source, a £260million particle accelerator. In
the same year, while serving on two UK government science bodies, Prof Redfern took up a role as a visiting professor at a subsidiary of the CAEP known as Hpstar. This was set up in 2014 to recruit foreign talent and since joining Prof Redfern has published 15 papers with its scientists. He has also accepted an award from China’s “Thousand Talents” plan, a programme that has been linked to intellectual property theft in other countries, whose participants are restricted from US federal funding. Hpstar, like its parent institution, is named on a US sanctions list.
Meanwhile, Cambridge has hosted at least three researchers from the CAEP since 2014, including one from the CAEP defence laboratory on “shock wave and detonation physics”. The latest is listed on papers as being affiliated with Hpstar.
The visiting academics would have had their visas checked by the Home Office. Cambridge University said: “We would welcome greater support from government to navigate an evolving geopolitical landscape that seeks to balance trade relations with national security considerations.”
Manchester University, which has run joint laboratories with two Chinese defence conglomerates, also appears to have links with the CAEP. Its researchers have published 14 papers in collaboration with CAEP since 2015, many of them involving Manchester professor Qingming Li.
Prof Li studies explosions and projectiles. While holding a senior role at Manchester and working on UK government-funded projects, he is also an “adjunct professor” at a defence laboratory at Beijing Institute of Technology. A spokesman for Manchester University said it has strict policies in place to ensure research is
not used beyond its intended purpose and said it operated in accordance with government guidelines.
However, the links with universities raise questions about whether the UK’S regime for regulating research partnerships is fit for purpose.
In total, The Telegraph found that scientists at 33 UK universities, including Edinburgh and 18 Russell Group institutions, such as Queen Mary University London, have conducted research with CAEP or its subsidiaries.
The joint Uk-china projects also show how taxpayers could be inadvertently funding research at China’s nuclear weapons programme through science funding grants and the use of Britain’s government-funded science facilities, including Archer and the Diamond Light Source.
Radomir Tylecote, co-author of a report on Sino-british research links for Civitas, called The Telegraph’s findings “a major national scandal”.
Tom Tugendhat, chair of the House of Commons foreign affairs committee, described the links as “extraordinary”, adding: “Some universities’ apparent lack of curiosity about their partners leaves them exposed to accusations of collusion with hostile states, violating human rights and undermining the security of the UK. Clearly they need to realise their responsibility, but the Government also has an essential role in making sure they’re aware of the consequences arising from these partnerships.”
All the universities involved have insisted that the research was compliant with government legislation, regulations and guidance, and their partnerships were subject to stringent checks on security, ethics governance and intellectual property protection. None of the research had any military use, they said in statements. In response to the findings, a Government spokesman said that “they will not accept collaborations which compromise our national security and … continue to work with the sector to identify and mitigate the risks of interference”.
‘It is an extremely bad idea to co-operate with an institute that develops nuclear weapons’