Once again, that scientific language arguably belies a more hard-nosed reality. For one thing, Kittler has co-authored numerous papers with Jiangnan academics who have also conducted research commissioned by the Chinese military. In 2018, he co-chaired a conference in Beijing on biometric recognition together with Tan Tieniu, a former PhD student at Imperial College who now serves as the secretary of the local Communist Party branch at Nanjing University, which happens to be the base of China’s State Secrecy Academy.
“China has received help from scientists working here in Britain.”
Like with Luk, these technologies aren’t merely there for show. On the contrary, as The Sunday Times reported in 2020, his FaceR2VM project, jointly funded by the UK and China, conducted research aimed at allowing people to be identified from the bumps and ridges on their ears and noses, and by their facial expressions, even if they were wearing a mask. That’s exactly the sort of technology used to follow China’s political dissidents, and minority groups such as the Uyghurs.
Kittler’s relationship with China also extends beyond the lab. In 2016, at a glittering ceremony in Beijing, he was given a “Friendship Award” by the then-vice premier Ma Kai — a prize reserved for “foreign experts who have made outstanding contributions to the country’s economic and social progress”. In January, he is due to teach at a “winter school” alongside his friend Tan Tieniu, sanctioned by the US for his involvement in human rights abuses in Hong Kong.
Not that we should necessarily be surprised. As William Hannas of Georgetown University explains, though Luk and Kittler are hardly unique. Beijing, says the former China expert at the CIA, “has a long track record of appropriating the skills of US scientists” into their service. The same, Hannas adds, is also true of Britain.
On this side of the Atlantic, officials are discretely making similar sounds. Together with the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) recently compiled a list of every research partnership between British and Chinese universities. Speaking on condition of anonymity, sources told me it included some 500 separate projects — of which about 10% were “red flagged” on the grounds they posed a risk to national security or human rights.
But given the concerns over the way the People’s Republic uses technology, fears dating back years, why are British institutions still accepting Chinese cash? The answer, as so often with the university sector, is because otherwise they would go bust. As UKRI reported, joint research with China brought in an extra £440 million between 2007-21, even as Chinese students studying in Britain spent £5.4 billion on tuition fees and accommodation in 2021 alone.
To an extent, such compromises are the bread-and-butter of being in government, especially for a country as eager for foreign investment as Britain. Yet if opposition Conservatives have obvious reasons for scepticism — George Freeman, a research security minister under Rishi Sunak, says it’s vital that Britain “better protect” its intellectual property and research — observers outside Parliament are worried too.
This post was originally published on here
