Opinion | Wake up Britain, your pressing problem is hardly Chinese espionage
The paranoia over people with connections to China tells us less about the scale of any real threat and more about the anxieties shaping Britain’s view of Beijing
Needless to say, those of Chinese heritage are viewed with even deeper suspicion. Having spent 13 years in the British higher education sector and being a Chinese national, I am all too familiar with these narratives.
I encountered these suspicions first-hand during my six years as director of a UK-based Confucius Institute. If one follows the logic of Britain’s spy hysteria, I should count as a “former director of a Chinese spy agency”. The only thing missing, I suppose, is the training – how to be a spy, how to run a spy agency, how to operate one. If I’d ever had that experience, perhaps I could have written Memoirs of a Spy Chief instead of Memoirs of a Confucius Institute Director, which was published in August.
When I first went to Britain to study at the University of Warwick more than a decade ago, I was drawn to its culture and global soft power. I grew up watching British films, especially the James Bond series. Many Chinese people’s image of espionage is shaped by 007 and his iconic introduction, “Bond, James Bond”. He is sophisticated, drives luxury cars, uses hi-tech gadgets and is often surrounded by glamorous companions.