Students at a British university's China campus are required to pledge allegiance to Xi JInping's Chinese Communist Party, it has been claimed.
The University of Nottingham is facing questions about its campus in the city of Ningbo, China.
The University was the first British institution to establish a satellite in China when it opened the campus in eastern China’s Zhejiang province, in 2004.
A Channel 4 Dispatches documentary has now raised questions about the university’s management of the campus under President Xi’s regime
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The university is predominantly attended by Chinese students but has hundreds of international students, including Britons.
Channel 4 Dispatches revealed pictures of Chinese students and academics pledging allegiance to the Communist Party in the past year.
Dispatches said The People’s Liberation Army has carried out marches at the campus while students have compulsory study sessions on Xi Jinping Thought, the collected writings of the Chinese leader.
The documentary, about Chinese interference in the UK, also raised concerns about the links of Imperial College London with the regime.
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The Nottingham University has had a campus in China in 2004
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Former head of Nottingham’s School of Contemporary Chinese Studies (SCCS) Steve Tsang is now the director of the China Institute at Soas in London. He left Nottingham after it closed down SCCS in 2016.
He said: "It raises the question whether we can continue to say that maintaining a campus like that in China is in the interest of the reputation of the university and for British higher education more generally."
A spokesperson from The University of Nottingham said: "We do not recognise the descriptions of the University of Nottingham Ningbo China campus.
"Any UK institution operating overseas… must observe the laws and customs of the host country. The University of Nottingham is committed to supporting and promoting academic freedom and ensures open research and freedom of speech."
The campus in Ningbo, China
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Dispatches also revealed that an Imperial College London academic wrote eight papers with researchers at Shanghai University on the use of artificial intelligence that could have military purposes.
Founder of the college’s Data Science Institute Guo Yike researched how AI could be used to harness fleets of drone ships.
In 2019 he signed a research collaboration with Jari, a Chinese research institute that helps design military equipment.
Imperial said that it terminated the partnership in 2021 and returned the funding to Jari. Guo said his papers could benefit societies worldwide but was "basic" and "written to help expand our existing base of scientific or technological knowledge rather than immediately solve specific real-world problems."
