Andrew Neil: The aim of China in the long term is to recast the world order.

andrew this story in the times today it's not the first time we've seen this just the extent to which chinese companies are investing in british universities buying up schools should we be concerned or are these just normal commercial transactions no i think we should be concerned because vast sums of money are involved and that money comes with the price i mean china is trying to influence us i don't think it's trying to take us over that's not insane but it's trying to make sure that our educational institutions our academics uh our opinion formers see the world with uh china's point of view in mind this isn't just a british problem the confucius institutes across the united states are doing the same in america there's deep concern in washington about this it's a long-term plan it's a slow plan it doesn't happen overnight and i think they are the the thing that makes it more serious the thing that makes it a cause of real concern is that under president xi china is moving back to a form of mao's totalitarianism this this is not a country i mean it's never been a democracy but it was for a while run by kind of an oligarchy and there was a certain amount of debate it wasn't as repressive as it is now z is taking it all the way back to the age of mao in that regard there's a massive crackdown on everybody it's a surveillance state and you just wonder given that it is effectively back to not an authoritarian state but a totalitarian state now do we really want our universities to be so close to it or to be flooded with its money well i agree entirely and yet these are the same universities of course who back in 2016 during the referendum 21 vice chancellors without even consulting their boards said we should vote remain and that was because they were getting money from the european union so they were happy to take money from the eu happy to take money from china does this expose a bigger problem with british universities because whenever i've been in america i've seen the most extraordinary legacies that families have given american universities or where private companies in america are investing directly is there something wrong with the thinking of our universities and i ask that because you know when you look at the top 20 universities in the world you know we are still very well represented aren't we well of the top two 20 universities in the world 16 are american and the other four are british and if you go to the top 20 there are more british top 30 there are more british come in too so we're clearly a target and our top universities are international institutions i mean i think the vice chancellors of the universities you referred to were going to vote for remain whether or not there was chinese money that's the social group they came from and it was overwhelmingly remain you're right that america gets a ton of private uh finance they've got these massive uh holdings and i think harvard has a uh has has bigger reserves than every other british university put together so they've got a ton of money but it doesn't stop them from taking chinese money too and as i said there's concern there our universities are not don't have the funds available that the american ones do which in a way makes us more vulnerable if somebody comes along with a big chinese checkbook then they are more likely to take this money as i say this is a long game on the part of china's this is an attempt to influence thinking over the long run this is an attempt to get us to see the world more through chinese eyes the aim of china in the long term is to recast the world order away from the rules-based american system more to a world order that is in keeping with the way china sees the world the whole belt and road of play is for that that is investing in africa and asia and so on this move into our universities our seats of learning isn't just that they're in other institutions as well it's an attempt just bit by bit to build more influence as they become more economically powerful they know that many decision makers many influence uh influential people opinion formers are hostile to china and in the long run they're trying to change that my own view is they won't succeed my own view is also the universities need to be a lot more careful when they take this money and to make sure there's no strings attached i mean i do think that you've seen a kind of um closing of criticism of china among academics they're less likely to want to do that now they know in the end of the day you know he who pays the piper calls it well of course of course but that's a long run problem for us this goes way beyond academia because i mean just taking huawei as one example if you look at the people that have served on their advisory board over the last few years you get sir michael rake the former president of the cbi you get lord brown of maddingly the former chief executive of bp uh sir andrew khan who was very close to neil kenneck when he was at the european commission and the list goes on and on and on of very very senior business and political figures that in some way have found themselves in the pay of chinese companies over the course of the last few years so yes it's way beyond academia the question i guess is what should we do should we try should we really try to make sure that chinese companies has less influence in the united kingdom or do we just have to accept as vince cable and stanley johnson on this program have argued with me in recent weeks that this is the way of the world that china is the economic future and we simply have to face up to that well the first thing i'd say nigel is never underestimate the ability of the british establishment bot for gold uh and to sell access like that it seems to be happening at the various highest i levels i'm waiting on my invitation to go and have dinner with prince charles too but i haven't given him any money yet i think the second thing i would say is that a lot of what you described there was always exactly true it happened in a time when our attitudes to china were different remember under david cameron we were going to be china's best friends indeed until donald trump came along in america america was going to be china's best friend too we were going to live closely together work together to our mutual benefit and then as i say things changed with the arrival of president xi and this suddenly became not a country that was opening up was become more liberal was more open to the market economy to foreign investment all the rest it was a country that was becoming more and more totalitarian because you know they've just cracked down on all their own um uh high-tech companies they've just they've just had a real goal at all of them they're putting some businessmen in jail now local government leaders too because they let house prices get too high there is a kind of element of marxism coming back in or socialism is one leading uh chinese intellectual code coming back in to the chinese way of doing things this is a much less um attractive proposition now and i think both in london and in washington dc and even in berlin you begin to see the western nations begin beginning to think hey we should get too close we better pull back from this we don't want to be in bed with a government that locks up and commits a genocide against us muslims and and and it's a surveying state that monitors every single move that the chinese people take to we are going through i think a reset in our relations with china and i would think if you and i were to talk in two three four years time again i don't think you would see the kind of names that you've just given having the same relationship with china again i think that'll become very difficult well i hope that's right and i know that you and i have rarely seen eye to eye on the issue of donald trump but in this particular case did trump do the world a favor in waking us up to what communist china had become under z well i think that mr trump in his usual rather uh um sort of bull in a china shop way uh and and he was far too concerned with tara sunshine but he recognized i think what was happening in china that uh the idea that uh there would be a very close coupling between china and america was working to china's advantage but not to america's advantage that things had to change the president obama had done very little about it he thought he could smooth talk the chinese it didn't work there was a sea change with mr trump in the white house and hey uh it's now the new consensus in washington you will know as well as i do washington uh nigel that there are very washington is a very divisive place these days there are very few things on which there's a consensus but there is now a consensus between the democrats and the republicans in taking it far tougher line with the chinese that started with mr trump yeah mr biden was a slow learner in getting to where he is now but if you look at the people and i know a couple of them of the china advisors around mr biden they're pretty hard line now there's a sea change in america's view of china yeah no there really is andrew dill thank you ever so much for joining me and i look forward to seeing you at the same time next week thank you welcome to the gb news youtube channel you can watch us live 24 hours a day catch up on your favorite shows and join in the conversation in the comments below don't forget to subscribe and you'll never miss any of our exclusive content

Channel: GBNews

Views: 113,146

Rating: 4.9023709 out of 5

Keywords: GB news, gbnews, Colin Brazier, Gloria De Piero, Michelle Dewberry, Andrew Doyle, Inaya Folarin Iman, Kirsty Gallacher, Liam Halligan, Tom Harwood, Rebecca Hutson, Darren McCaffrey, Simon McCoy, Nana Akua, Mercy Muroki, Andrew Neil, Neil Oliver, Alastair Stewart, Dan Wootton, Rosie Wright, Great Britain, United Kingdom, England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, Alex Phillips, news, breaking news, Mark Dolan

Id: asMFCT_htb0

Length: 10min 21sec (621 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 13 2021