Rishi Sunak faces grilling from MPs over economy, global issues and strategy – UK politics live

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China influencing leading British universities, documentary claims

Leading British universities have been influenced by Chinese agents, with diplomatic and unofficial pressure resulting in censorship on campus, according to a Channel 4 documentary. The Dispatches documentary, Secrets and Power: China in the UK, alleges that the University of Nottingham closed its School of Contemporary Chinese Studies in 2016 in response to pressure from Beijing. The former head of the institute, Prof Steve Tsang, has openly criticised the Chinese Communist party (CCP) on several occasions, but said that university management asked him not to speak to the media during…

Robert Benewick obituary

My friend Robert Benewick, who has died aged 90, was a political scientist who made major contributions to our knowledge of British and Chinese politics. He was also a soft-spoken fighter for social justice and international understanding. He first visited China in 1975 and over the next 40 years held four visiting professorships at Remnin University of China. In collaboration with British, American and Chinese colleagues he produced seven books and scores of articles on China. As a critical friend of the country he had a leading role in the…

Sustained rift with China would harm UK universities, report warns

UK universities would be hugely damaged by a sustained diplomatic rift between Britain and China, according to a report that predicts difficulty in replacing the Chinese students who now take up more than one in four PhD places. The study, co-authored by the former universities minister Jo Johnson, found that many leading institutions remain highly dependent on Chinese students for tuition fee income as well as to fill postgraduate research courses in subjects such as economics, science and technology. A sudden inflaming of tensions between the UK and China –…

Fifth of UK universities’ income comes from overseas students, figures show

One in every five pounds received by UK universities last year came from international students, according to Guardian analysis that reveals the scale of the sector’s growing dependence on overseas tuition fees for financial survival. With the annual dash to allocate university places for the next academic year about to begin, there are fears UK students could lose out to their overseas counterparts, whose higher fees have become critical to university budgets. Tuition fees from international students now make up a third or more of the total income at some…

English universities warned not to over-rely on fees of students from China

England’s higher education regulator has warned universities against over-reliance on tuition fees of students from China, as Rishi Sunak backtracked on his earlier pledge to close UK branches of the Beijing-sponsored Confucius Institute. The Office for Students (OfS) wrote to 23 universities with high numbers of Chinese students on Thursday, asking to see their contingency planning in case of a sudden interruption to overseas recruitment. “Such interruptions could result from, for example, a changing geopolitical environment which could cause an immediate and significant impact on income,” an OfS report said.…