Jesus College still can’t bring itself to face the problems at the heart of its China Centre
Ahub of pro-beijing activity at Cambridge University is at last being reined in. Set up in 2017 as part of Jesus College, the China Centre has long claimed that it fosters independent dialogue on China. But after a slew of press reports suggesting otherwise, Jesus opened a review into its activities in 2019. It has finally concluded.
The review makes some longoverdue recommendations, including a policy of transparency about the Centre’s sources of funding and the suggestion that it practise “academic freedom”, rather than simply claiming it does. You could be forgiven for thinking that dons are finally entertaining the thought, trickling uncomfortably through their brains like a stream of iced water, that they may have allowed their college to host a propaganda factory for a genocidal regime. Alas, the review panel’s report stops short of such a conclusion.
Instead, the report is steeped in the delicate art of office politicking. There is lavish praise for the China Centre’s “truly remarkable” seminars and the “exceptionally generous … time, effort and creativity invested” by its director, Peter Nolan – all, remarkably, unpaid.
There is no mention of the fact that Prof Nolan’s academic work was supported by a £3.7million donation to the university from the family of Wen Jiabao, China’s former prime minister. Nor does it mention that Prof Nolan has been recorded telling Cambridge students that the centre should not hold an event to discuss China’s mass human rights abuses in Xinjiang because it would not be “helpful” and would make it “very difficult to contain … sentiment”. Such facts, you might think, would not make him the most suitable person to run a truly independent centre of study focused on China.
Indeed, as the report points out, the China Centre was notable in its omission of any events on Xinjiang or Hong Kong from its programme, a situation belatedly remedied last year after pressure from students. Even then, its Hong Kong seminar, featuring the Chinese state TV pundit Grenville Cross QC (who has called democracy protesters “terrorists”), happened to run on so long that there was just no time for questions from the audience.
Speakers at its Xinjiang seminar, meanwhile, emphasised “Islamic fundamentalism in Xinjiang”, the effect of Western (yes, Western) “Islamophobia” and the need for a “recognition of the reality of serious violence over many years in Xinjiang”. Nowhere, according to the Centre’s write-up, was Beijing’s incarceration, torture, rape or medical experimentation on more than
1.5 million Uyghurs discussed.
As for who funds this “independent” centre of scholarship, it turns out that it gets its cash from a “charity” funded by a consortium of companies like HSBC and WPP, which have major Chinese businesses, and that the main purpose of this “charity” is to pay Cambridge to run a training course for Chinese state officials. In other words, the principle backer of the China Centre is “closely tied to the interests of the Chinese state”, the report states. The charity’s director, by the way, is one Peter Nolan.
It is hard to know whether the review panel is so naïve as to believe that all this merely gives “the appearance” of an organisation captured by the Chinese state, whose director runs “the risk” of a conflict of interest, or whether they are in fact quietly disgusted. Perhaps they meant to sound sarcastic when they warned that Prof Nolan’s position could “all-too-easily [make him] the target of criticism”.
They conclude that the whole situation has led to “considerable confusion” in the press about the role of the China Centre. Of course, we know – and perhaps they do too – that the only “confusion” here is the moral confusion in the mind of anyone who thinks that an academic institution which allowed the Cambridge name to be prostituted by a totalitarian state under the guise of “mutual understanding” can still claim to possess a shred of integrity. A real reckoning would require Cambridge to admit that the whole thing had been a horrible mistake.
There is no mention of the fact that Prof Nolan’s academic work was supported by a £3.7m donation to the university from the family of former Chinese PM Wen Jiabao