UK’s national security adviser Jonathan Powell co-hosted events with think-tank linked to Chinese intelligence

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The UK’s national security adviser Jonathan Powell before taking up his current role co-hosted and attended events with a Beijing think-tank with experts linked to China’s intelligence agencies, according to western analysts.

The Grandview Institution (GVI), whose experts met Powell on at least four occasions when he was head of his peace negotiation consultancy Inter Mediate, is privately incorporated and says it is “independent”.

But according to research from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, corroborated by publicly available information, a number of GVI’s senior staff have current or past links with China’s Ministry of State Security, the country’s primary foreign spy agency, and to military intelligence.

“GVI has remarkable convening power for an unofficial think-tank, arranging meetings for government and military delegations from around the world with senior Chinese government and party officials,” said Bethany Allen, head of China investigations at ASPI.

The links of some of GVI’s personnel to civilian and military intelligence organisations were “not normal for an unofficial think-tank”, Allen said.

ASPI’s research comes amid heightened anxiety in the UK about Chinese influence and espionage. A high-profile case against two Britons accused of spying for Beijing collapsed last month and UK domestic spy agency MI5 warned on Tuesday that China’s intelligence services were targeting people who work in parliament.

The research also highlights the multiple roles played by Chinese think-tanks, which include acting as important channels of communication between foreigners and Beijing policymakers while also promoting Chinese Communist party agendas.

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UK officials pointed out that Powell had worked on China-related matters since being involved in negotiations on Hong Kong 30 years ago, and that people working with Beijing were well aware Grandview was an “interlocutor” for the Chinese government.

“The idea you can engage with China without speaking to people with close links to the CCP is not a serious position,” one UK official said.

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GVI was founded by Ren Libo, a former reporter for China’s state media agency Xinhua, according to his biography on the GVI website. But Aspi’s Allen said Ren’s role appeared to be more as a convener for other key figures at GVI.

GVI’s academic committee director Zhang Tuosheng has had a long career with People’s Liberation Army academic institutions and served in China’s UK embassy, according to his publicly available biographical details. He has also chaired the academic committee of the China Foundation for International Strategic Studies (CFISS), which western analysts say is PLA-affiliated. Zhang said he left CFISS several years ago and said the foundation had no relationship with GVI.

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GVI’s academic committee deputy director Ouyang Wei has also been a director of the China Association for International Friendly Contact, according to publicly available biographical information. CAIFC’s website says it is controlled by the foreign and civil affairs ministries, but western analysts and a 2011 US congressional report have said it is a front for the PLA’s international liaison department, which collects intelligence and conducts Chinese propaganda and perception management campaigns.

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A former vice-president of GVI is Tian Shichen, whose long military career before retiring included stints in intelligence and at the Central Military Commission, the PLA supreme leadership body, according to his publicly available biographical information.

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GVI’s senior research fellow Li Wei also serves as the assistant to the president of China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, according to GVI’s website. CICIR is a think-tank under the MSS, which runs the country’s spy agency, Chinese state media has reported in the past.

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While think-tanks everywhere sometimes employ former members of the military and intelligence services, in democratic political systems they can still be independent from the governing political party, analysts say.

In China’s one-party state, by contrast, particularly under President Xi Jinping, who has called for “think-tanks with Chinese characteristics”, the room for public debate or independent policy outreach is highly restricted.

“We must uphold the Party’s leadership,” Xi said in an article on building a “new type” of think-tank in 2014.

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Peter Mattis, president of the Jamestown Foundation and a former counter-intelligence analyst at the CIA, said Chinese think-tanks typically had two main external uses: cover for espionage and “to provide an alternative way to convincingly deliver talking points”.

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