MI5 says China’s spy funding reached projects involving 100-plus UK-linked academics

MI5 has accused the China General Technology Research Institute of using academic grants to improve the technical reach of China’s civilian intelligence service. In an Espionage Alert issued on 30 September, the agency said CGTRI’s primary purpose was to fund research that directly improved the Ministry of State Security’s capability for espionage. The warning was MI5’s first independently published public alert of its kind, Reuters reported.

The scale reaches deep into British research. MI5 said more than 100 UK-linked academics had contributed to CGTRI-funded projects, including work on artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, covert communications and steganography. The agency also stressed that some academics may not have known who ultimately supplied the money. Nothing in the reviewed material establishes that the researchers knowingly assisted an intelligence service.

Security Minister Dan Jarvis told university leaders to end arrangements with the institute. Reuters and the Associated Press reported that MI5 warned continued collaboration could risk prosecution under the National Security Act. The alert advised institutions to review current and planned projects immediately and urged researchers to identify the ultimate source of funding behind Chinese partnerships.

China’s embassy in London rejected the allegations as fabricated and said academic exchanges were lawful, voluntary and mutually beneficial. The Russell Group told AP that its members take national-security responsibilities seriously while maintaining that international collaboration remains important. The available reports do not identify individual universities or academics accused of deliberate wrongdoing.

The alert turns a familiar security warning into a compliance problem for laboratories and funding offices: institutions now have to trace money beyond the named partner on a project. But the public record reviewed here does not show which relationships were terminated after the warning, whether any investigation has begun, or whether CGTRI has separately answered MI5’s claims. The core allegation remains MI5’s, contested by the Chinese government.