Cambridge takes up to £4.9m from Chinese Communist Party-linked donor

Yahoo

07-02-2025

The University of Cambridge accepted donations of up to £4.9 million from a Hong Kong property tycoon with close ties to the city's sanctioned leaders and the Chinese Communist Party, The Telegraph can reveal.
Cambridge was under pressure on Thursday night to hand back the cash amid claims that accepting the 'tainted' money compromised its academic independence.
The donor Daryl Ng, who is estimated to be worth more than £11billion and whose family's business empire includes the Sino Group, has worked for both Carrie Lam and John Lee Ka-chiu, the former and serving chief executives of Hong Kong respectively.
Mr Ng has served on two regional advisory committees in mainland China, which form part of the Chinese Communist Party's governing structures, and has praised Beijing's approach to Hong Kong.
Both Lam and Lee were sanctioned by the US Treasury in 2020 for their crackdown on free speech and political freedoms in the city, carried out at the behest of Beijing. It was widely condemned by western Governments after causing mass protests.
The UK has also accused Hong Kong's leaders and Beijing of reneging on legal commitments that the city maintain a high degree of autonomy. Since the clampdown began, more than 150,000 Hongkongers have fled to Britain under the British National Overseas visa route.
Now, a freedom of information request has revealed that Cambridge University last year accepted a donation of between £1 million and £4.99 million from Mr Ng to fund a land economy PhD scholarship. Cambridge refused to specify the exact sum.
Sir Iain Duncan Smith, the former Tory leader, said Cambridge should hand back the money. He said: 'What Cambridge is trying to do is to disguise the nature of his links to the Chinese Communist Party and try to do it in a way that doesn't alert anybody. But they have been found out.
'This is not the only time. My worry is that Cambridge has pretty much sold out to China. Anything that comes from China is going to be money that is tainted by the CCP's own actions.
'It is a brutal Government that practises genocide and slave labour. Cambridge should hand [the donation] back.'
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.'
Mr Ng, whose family is originally from Singapore, was born in Hong Kong and has spent most of his career working for his family's Hong Kong real estate businesses as deputy chair of the Sino Group.
He has also built deep political ties in the former British colony and mainland China. In 2017, he served as deputy director of Lam's election campaign to become Hong Kong's chief executive. Five years later, he also formed part of the three-member campaign finance team for Lee, who replaced Lam as chief executive.
During Lam's tenure, Beijing imposed a new national security law on Hong Kong, granting it and the Hong Kong authorities more power to stifle opposition to the two respective governments.
Mr Ng has served on municipal people's political consultative committees for Sichuan province and Beijing, which granted him an award in 2020 that is given to 'those who love the motherland, are committed to the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation, and have made outstanding contributions to international cooperation and exchanges'.
Such committees form part of China's 'patriotic united front' and have no official legislative role. According to the Taiwanese government, members are 'hand-picked to function as a rubber stamp' of CCP policy.
In August last year, the same month he donated to Cambridge, Mr Ng also wrote an article praising the CCP's 'visionary grand design [with] promising implications for Hong Kong' in the South China Morning Post.
When his donation was announced by Cambridge, the university made no reference to the sum of money or his political affiliations, citing only his 'passion for real estate' and that the studentship would be named in honour of his grandfather who studied at Cambridge in the 1940s.
Mr Ng is just one of several wealthy donors to have given to the university since the clampdown in Hong Kong began. In the past four years, it received £24.45 million from donors in the city, compared with just £13.57 million in the previous four-year period.
Cambridge has accepted multiple donations from China particularly under Stephen Toope, its former vice-chancellor. This week, Jesus College announced that its controversial China Forum would close after criticism over opaque funding arrangements and avoiding controversial subjects such as treatment of the minority Uyghurs.
A Cambridge university spokesman said: 'The studentship was funded by Mr Ng, a Singaporean citizen, to honour his late Singaporean grandfather who studied at Cambridge in the 1940s. It supports talented students of all nationalities to undertake research. The University has a robust system for reviewing strategic relationships, donations, and sources of funding.'
Mr Ng has been contacted for comment via his company.
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