SIR Iain Duncan Smith has said UK universities have now been taken over by China.
Speaking on GB News, he said: “It’s very serious for two very good reasons. First of all, in light of the spy trial that’s been collapsed deliberately by the government, and also the coming debate about the super embassy, which is due, I think they postponed it now till December. But all of this comes encapsulated in what happened at Sheffield Hallam.
“Laura Murphy was sanctioned at the same time as I was and others back in 2020. She was sanctioned because the Chinese believed that she had caused all the problems over the genocide in Xinjiang, and she unearthed a lot of the data.
“Another man called Professor Zenz did, and we got it out through the inter parliamentary alliance, globally. So they were very angry about that.
“But what they’ve done over the years is basically, they’ve taken over our universities. As far as I can make out, most of the Russell Group now are completely reliant on the money that comes from foreign students, which are Chinese students.
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“And Oxford and Cambridge, particularly Cambridge, is in a very bad state over the same thing. And of course, what they’re doing is wielding their power.
“So when [Laura Murphy] was doing all this research, really breakthrough research, talking to Uyghur people who lived in Xinjiang who were suffering this terrible genocide, she was getting all of her data correctly, properly balanced, and publishing it. And then suddenly the university turned to her and said, ‘You’ve got to stop.’
“And of course, what we discovered was China said, ‘if you don’t stop them, we’re going to block off your entrance.’ And they duly did that.
“So we are completely open now to China in so many ways, and that’s why you’re right to say this is important. Because what it does show, it shows who we really are now and what we are in hock to China for.
“What we were told was, this wouldn’t matter. It doesn’t matter where the students came from. The trouble is the Chinese students pay the most money so many universities in the UK have taken these students because of the money.
“But they’ve also brought in Confucius Institutes, which offer free China teaching and Chinese language when in fact, they’re spies, and they spy on the students. So you can see the way their fingers have got inside all of the thinking of those who need to raise the money to run universities.
“And they know very well that the UK university, if you hold back on its cash, it won’t be able to operate. They are completely spineless, and the way they behave towards a seriously celebrated researcher, somebody who believed in freedom of speech and thought that we should be calling out countries like China that practice slave labour and genocide, which they were doing. Instead of which, they turned on her.
“And then she had to threaten a legal case before they finally backed down and have said that she can publish the data that she produces for them at the same time.
“But it does tell you everything you need to know about the United Kingdom. The United Kingdom, I’m afraid, is now in hock to China, and our problem is we must be seen as a very weak link in the Atlantic Alliance.”