Cambridge pressured to return “tainted” £4.9m from Chinese Communist Party-linked donor

The University accepted donations from a Hong Kong property tycoon with close ties to the CCP, revealed in The Telegraph.

5th anniversary of the Umbrella movement, via Wikimedia Commons

 On Friday, The Telegraph reported that Cambridge accepted up to £4.9 million from a CCP-linked property tycoon, contributing to growing fears about the University’s academic independence from China. 

The donations come from Daryl Ng, a property developer in Singapore, and the de facto CEO of the Sino group. In 2019, the Ng family’s collective net worth was estimated at $12.1 billion.

“This revelation comes after Jesus College announced that its China Forum would close early after criticism over ‘the transparency of the Centre’s funding’”

The new Chief Secretary for Administration, Mr John Lee Ka-chiu (left), takes the oath of office, witnessed by the Chief Executive, Mrs Carrie Lam (right) - via the Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region

Daryl Ng has worked for both Carrie Lam and John Lee Ka-Chiu, the former and serving chief executives of Hong Kong. Both Lam and Lee were sanctioned by the US Treasury in 2020 for their role in the crackdown on civil liberties in Hong Kong. Carrie Lam, a graduate from Wolfson College Cambridge, has faced strong criticism for her support, at the behest of Beijing, for the controversial 2019 extradition bill which sparked mass pro-democracy protests across Hong Kong. John Lee Ka-chiu is the current executive, succeeding Carrie lam as the only candidate directly approved by China. He is known as a hardliner against the pro-democracy movement and a supporter of the 2020 National Security Laws, condemned by the United Kingdom as a breach of Hong Kong’s autonomy.

Since the crackdown on the democracy movement, more than 150,000 Hongkongers have fled to Britain under the British National Overseas visa route, many fearing political reprisal for their role in the pro-democracy protests.

Ng has been directly involved with the political careers of both executives. In 2017, Ng served as deputy director of Lam’s election Campaign to become Hong Kong’s chief executive. Ng later served as part of a three-member campaign finance team for Lee.

The Telegraph’s freedom of information request revealed that Cambridge accepted a donation of between £1 million and £4.99 million from Ng to fund a land economy PhD scholarship.

Luke de Pulford, the executive director of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, said: “this is a characteristic failure of due diligence by Cambridge, which has one of the worst Beijing dependency problems of any UK university… Ng enjoys senior CCP positions and is literally all over the Chinese internet calling for Hongkongers to use their influence abroad. This kind of investment is not benevolent. It will come at a heavy price for Cambridge, where, as we have seen time and again across the UK, academic freedom will suffer.”

“This is a characteristic failure of due diligence by Cambridge, which has one of the worst Beijing dependency problems of any UK university”

- Luke de Pulford

 Ng, in an article last year for the South China Morning Post, directly praised the CCP’s “visionary grand design [with] promising implications for Hong Kong”. Ng has also served in the Chinese mainland on a regional advisory board, part of the CCP governance structures.  

This revelation comes after Jesus College announced that its China Forum would close early after criticism over ‘the transparency of the Centre’s funding’ and the reluctance of the program to engage with topics controversial with the CCP, such as democracy in Hong Kong and human right violations against the Uyghurs. 

The UK-China Transparency’s recent report on CCP interference on campus states that there is ‘broad scholarly consensus that the CCP has both the intent and the capacity to use coercion, intimidation, and rewards to suppress and censor views’ on issues such as the Hong Kong democracy movement, Taiwan, and ethnic policies in Tibet and the Xinjiang. The degree of CCP-linked donations in Cambridge raises further fears on the University’s academic and financial autonomy.