by Ganesh Sahathevan
In 2012, Australian intelligence officials informed their U.S. counterparts that they had detected a sophisticated intrusion into the country's telecommunications systems. It began, they said, with a software update from Huawei that was loaded with malicious code.
The breach and subsequent intelligence sharing was confirmed by nearly two dozen former national security officials who received briefings about the matter from Australian and U.S. agencies from 2012 to 2019. The incident substantiated suspicions in both countries that China used Huawei equipment as a conduit for espionage, and it has remained a core part of a case they’ve built against the Chinese company, even as the breach’s existence has never been made public, the former officials said.
The revelation raises even more questions about the Australian Government's inaction with regards Huawei associate iFlytek's business in Australia.
As reported the Huawei -IFlytek collaboaration is financed in part Top Education Group Ltd, a company now controlled by estate of the late Zhu Minshen.
TO BE READ WITH
riday, April 17, 2020
iFlytek & Huawei formed a strategic partnership in 2018, collaborated since 2010: NSW LPAB , Law Council Australia still silent about their approval of Zhu Minshen's Law School & his business with iFlytek given the Uyghur persecution
by Ganesh Sahathevan
Zhu Minshen and his Top Education Group Ltd's business with iFlytek is still of no concern to the NSW Legal Profession Admission Board, TEQSA and the Law Council Australia, despite iFlytek being sanctioned in the United States. The US banned iFlytek for its part in the Chinese Government's persecution of Xinjiang's Uyghurs.
Zhu Minshen and his Top Education Group Ltd's business with iFlytek is still of no concern to the NSW Legal Profession Admission Board, TEQSA and the Law Council Australia, despite iFlytek being sanctioned in the United States. The US banned iFlytek for its part in the Chinese Government's persecution of Xinjiang's Uyghurs.
The fact that iFlytek has actively collaborated with Huwaei since 2010 is also it seems of no concern to the NSW LPAB which is chaired by the Chief Justice of NSW, Tom Bathurst.
Bathurst, the Law Council Of Australia and the Attorney General of NSW Mark Speakman are primarily responsible for granting Zhu and his law school entry into the NSW and Australian legal establishment, despite his links to the Communist Party of China,and his undermining of the authority of the Australian Federal Police.
TO BE READ WITH
iFlytek: The voice of AI
iFlytek: The voice of AI
2018.09.19 By Xu Shenglan, Xue Hua
AI is on a clear upward trajectory and is reshaping all aspects of life. According to Hu Yu, Executive President and Consumer BG President of iFlytek, AI is starting to approach human intelligence. Serving hundreds of millions of users with its world-leading technologies, iFlytek started off as a pioneer in China’s voice recognition industry and has now evolved into a global leader in AI. But it all started with a little twist of fate.
From intelligent voice to Super Brain
Founded in 1999, iFlytek’s primary goal was to make machines talk, something that even today is reflected in the company’s mission: “We want the world to hear our voice.” And that’s starting to happen – the company is now at the forefront of the AI phenomenon.
Hu smiles as he recalls, “We had no idea at the time that we were working on AI. At least we weren’t sure what AI really was. We also weren’t aware that 1999 was a bad year for AI, as the second wave of AI innovation had just peaked.” Slightly tongue-in-cheek, he says, “If we’d known that AI was going to be such a tough business, we might never have started the company. I guess it was just fate.”
Around 2004, AI wasn’t the hot tech it is today, says Hu, but his team had come to realize that they were holding a key piece of AI. “The biggest difference between human intelligence and animal or machine intelligence is cognitive intelligence. It comes from our mastery of language and how we express knowledge, which allows us to do logical reasoning and complex decision-making,” he says. The cognitive revolution around voice and language, Hu believes, is the peak of human intelligence and the biggest challenge for AI today.
Hu is the leader of the iFlytek Super Brain Project, which was launched in 2014, “It’s much more than just a fancy name. We announced our definition of AI as computational intelligence.” He asserts that machines were much more powerful than humans since the day they were invented, citing AIs that play the board game Go as an example of computational intelligence. “Humanoid machines possess both perceptual intelligence and motion intelligence. That means they can see, hear, and feel the surrounding world. Today there are some impressive humanoid and animal-like machines,” he says. “However, the reason we’re at the top of the planet’s food chain is language, or ‘cognitive intelligence’.” According to Hu, one of the goals of the Super Brain Project is to evolve machines from the level of perceptual intelligence, where they can hear, talk, see, and recognize, to the level of cognitive intelligence, where they can understand and think.
Currently, Super Brain is using big data to train and optimize its algorithms. They’re not trained by simply cramming all kinds of data into the system; instead, the system actively processes data from interactions in real-world scenarios, and uses that data to update itself. Hu believes this style of self-enhancement is like the ripple effect, where the volume of data grows exponentially as the product reaches more people, enabling his team to more rapidly iterate and optimize the product experience.
No shortage of awards
iFlytek boasts leading tech in areas like speech synthesis, voice recognition, voice assessment, and translation. From 2005 to now, the company has racked up 13 consecutive wins at the Blizzard Challenge, the world’s leading speech synthesis contest. It’s also won various machine translation championships, including the IWSLT 2014 and NIST 2015. Over the past six years, iFlytek’s voice recognition accuracy has improved from 60.2 percent to over 98 percent. The company’s strengths in voice tech became a natural bridge into the world of AI and its industrial application.
iFlytek is also researching the dynamic of AI and neurology. Through computing based on the human brain, iFlytek is trying to unlock the mystery of our intelligence. If they succeed, it may pave the way towards Artificial General Intelligence, meaning human levels of intelligence, one of AI’s holy grails.
Translation on the fly
iFlytek started applying AI to the real world in the shape of natural language processing (NLP) back in 2010, when it developed China’s first voice input product and the second of its kind in the world, after Google. iFlytek’s system has an accuracy of more than 98 percent and supports 22 different Chinese dialects.
In 2016, iFlytek released its first smart device, the iFlytek Translator, which it followed up in April 2018 with the 2.0 incarnation. Offering real-time interpretation between Mandarin and 33 other languages and Chinese dialects, it also translates text in photographs and can be used on 4G or Wi-Fi networks or offline. Most of its users – 86 percent – use it on vacation. Translator 2.0 has also mastered the accents of four major dialects in China’s complex and voluminous linguistic web: Cantonese, Sichuanese, Northeastern Mandarin, and Henan dialect, with support for more expected in the future. In an advance for NLP, the product can recognize different situations and adapt to its users’ language tics.
“There are some who say that there’s no need to build a translator device because the translation function can be integrated into a smartphone. But we made a deliberate decision to sell our translator as a hardware device,” says Hu. First, he explains, we tend to hold our phones close to our faces, which might not always be possible depending on the scenario. Second, phones are affected by ambient noise. Third, Hu believes that intelligent hardware must be easy to use. The best experience is something that works with a single click, but using an app on a smartphone isn’t always easy or intuitive. Fourth, the translation process should allow for natural and intuitive interaction, and sticking your smartphone in someone’s face isn’t always socially acceptable.
In 2012, iFlytek launched its voice cloud platform as part of its efforts to build an ecosystem for the AI industry. Since then, more than 860,000 developers have worked on the platform, which connects 1.9 billion devices and provides nearly 4.6 billion interactive services each day.
In 2015, iFlytek launched the human-machine interaction interface AIUI, hitting a milestone in the AI industry. AIUI redefined the standards for human-machine interaction in the connected era. Hu adds, “In 2017, iFlytek was announced as one of China’s first open innovation platforms for next-generation AI and our platform will focus on intelligent voice technology. The government clearly recognizes the importance of the ecosystem built on our company’s AI.”
AI: An industry enabler
iFlytek is also applying intelligent voice and AI technology to different sectors, including the judiciary and education.
In the justice system, iFlytek is working with China’s Supreme People’s Court and Supreme People’s Procuratorate (public prosecutors). In 2016, a test in Anhui Province showed that an AI system could identify phone scams with a very high level of accuracy. Moreover, a pilot study found that trials were 30 percent shorter when intelligent voice recognition was used instead of a human reporter.
In education, AI has outperformed all expectations in scoring test papers. In a test in Jiangsu Province, two different AIs scored a series of college entrance test papers. For Chinese essay questions, the two AIs differed by an average of less than seven points per paper. They were 92.82 percent consistent – more than 5 percent higher than the average consistency of two human teachers. A trial in Hunan showed similar scores.
iFlytek is currently working with China’s National Education Examinations Authority to build an AI lab to jointly develop more advanced technologies for education.
A partnership covering multiple markets
iFlytek and Huawei have formed a strategic partnership to develop practical applications for voice and AI technology in the areas of telecoms and smart devices, building on nearly a decade of collaboration. In 2010, the two companies deployed the world’s first open cloud platform for Chinese voice recognition.
In May 2018, Huawei and iFlytek signed a strategic agreement covering four areas: public cloud services, ICT infrastructure, smart devices, and office IT systems. Huawei also integrated iFlytek’s AI technology into its smartphones to gain an edge over its competitors. Huawei and iFlytek are working on smart devices and device cloud services based on iFlytek’s voice AI technologies and capabilities, including voice recognition, speech synthesis, iFlyrec, and iFlytek translation.
In the enterprise space, Huawei uses iFlytek’s technology and products in its infrastructure and its own office applications. The iFlytek speech engine will form a key component of Huawei’s Enterprise Intelligence cloud platform. Hu believes that in the intelligence era, all AI applications will run on the cloud. As cloud computing consumes a lot of resources, device computing and edge computing will better support AI.
Each with its own strengths and ecosystems, we’re certain that Huawei and iFlytek will help build a strong AI ecosystem and make AI a valuable asset to life, business, and society.
Posted by Ganesh Sahathevan at 7:10 AM
Sunday, July 19, 2020
UK acts to prevent Huawei infiltration of universities while Australia ignores the Zhu Minshen-IFlytek/Huawei-Top Group nexus: Culture of secrecy, cover-ups at the the regulator NSW Legal Profession Admission Board complicating matters
by Ganesh Sahathevan
While the UK Government works to prevent Huawei from infiltrating its university system (see story below), Australia continues to do nothing about the matter of Huawei & iFlytek's entry into Australia's academic networks via CPC linked Zhu Minshen and his Top Group:
It does look as if the responsible regulator, the NSW Legal Profession Admission Board is the problem. Chaired by the Chief Justice Of NSW Tom Bathurst, the NSW LPAB has a culture of secrecy and cover-ups grounded in a sense of judicial immunity. That sense of immunity has not however prevented an investigation of its failures in Malaysia:
The British government’s decision this week to ban Chinese technology giant Huawei from its national telecommunications infrastructure has prompted renewed scrutiny over Huawei’s links with universities in the United Kingdom and renewed calls for transparency in university dealings with the Chinese company.
The UK government announced on 14 July that the purchase of new Huawei equipment for high speed 5G networks will be banned at the end of 2020, and all Huawei equipment will be removed from UK 5G networks by 2027 following a review by the government’s National Cyber Security Centre. The United States and Australia have also banned Huawei from public contracts.
The United States has been lobbying its allies to exclude Huawei equipment on security grounds, arguing that the Chinese government can use Huawei as leverage to disrupt vital communications networks in foreign countries. Huawei has consistently denied it assists the Chinese government efforts to spy on mobile communications.
The decision was preceded by considerable debate on China’s influence, including on universities.
US lobbying extended to attempts to block local planning permission for a new £1 billion (US$1.3 billion) Huawei research hub on the outskirts of Cambridge, approved last month. Keith Krach, US under-secretary of state for economic growth, energy and the environment, said in advance of permission being granted that Huawei was “after the people and technology. They want to co-opt the researchers and talent from one of the most prestigious universities.”
Permission was granted on 24 June at a local district committee hearing, which, unusually for this type of local issue, was attended by ambassadors from a number of European countries who wanted to observe the proceedings.
Huawei announced on 26 June that the hub would specialise in fibre optics communications technology. Huawei Vice President Victor Zhang said in a statement that it was not linked to recent US sanctions on Huawei. “Huawei began developing plans for this site more than three years ago, in 2017, so well before the subject of Huawei and 5G was raised in the UK.”
College group demands transparency
With considerable Huawei investment in Cambridge, a major technology hub, student groups in Cambridge have stepped up demands for more transparency in university dealings with Huawei, and China in general, particularly because of ethical concerns over the national security law imposed on Hong Kong by Beijing and human rights abuses in Xinjiang.
Earlier this month the student union at Jesus College, Cambridge University raised “grave concerns” about the college’s ties to Beijing in a letter to the college head or ‘Master’, Sonita Alleyne.
The student union had called for a college commitment to accept no further funding or donations from Huawei and demanded an investigation into the college’s China Centre. The college accepted £155,000 in September 2019 from Huawei for a ‘two-year research cooperation’ under the centre, which resulted in a white paper on global telecommunications reform. Students said the white paper portrayed Huawei in a favourable light.
The paper attracted attention beyond the university, including from MPs on the UK’s Foreign Affairs Select Committee, which said the report from a prestigious university amounted to “reputation laundering” by Huawei.
Matthew Henderson, of the Henry Jackson Society, a foreign policy think tank in London which focuses on open democracy, commented at the time: “It is deeply disturbing that Huawei has been able to buy itself a publication endorsed by Cambridge University.”
The China Centre’s website said its team “organises seminars and workshops, hosting speakers with a wide array of views”.
According to participants, the Huawei-funded report was based on a conference held at the centre and included representatives of Facebook Europe, Google, Vodaphone, Alibaba and international bodies such as the International Telecommunication Union, the OECD, the UN trade and development agency UNCTAD, as well as prominent figures such as former Australian prime minister, Kevin Rudd.
“We think the China Centre occupies an important role in [Jesus] College, and we are keen to work constructively with College to reform the Centre so that it better represents the values of financial transparency, academic freedom and political independence,” the student union letter said and called on Alleyne to commit to the centre hosting events on Chinese human rights abuses as well as the situation in Hong Kong.
College response
Alleyne said in an email to the college community, including alumni, that the college was beginning a review of some of its ‘historic collaborations’. “This includes our connections with China, some of which date back many years,” she said in the email dated 9 July and seen by University World News.
It includes the Jesus College China Centre as well as a separate UK-China Global Issues Dialogue Centre run by the college, which also receives Huawei funding.
Alleyne said the current two-year agreement between the Dialogue Centre and Huawei included a clause “enshrining academic freedom and free speech written into the research collaboration agreement. The Dialogue Centre owns all research results; Huawei cannot veto research findings, the publication of views or conclusions.
“We are cognisant of the rapidly changing situation in China, particularly in relation to human rights. At this crucial time, it is important that we as an academic institution remain committed to dialogue and intellectual discourse between China and the West.”
Jesus College has also revealed under a request under the UK’s Freedom of Information Act submitted by The Times newspaper that it had received £200,000 in September 2018 from China’s State Council – equivalent to the cabinet and headed by Premier Li Keqiang – for the separate UK-China Global Issues Dialogue Centre set up by the college at that time in collaboration with Tsinghua University in Beijing, which has also been a focus of the student union’s concerns.
The United States has also particularly focused its lobbying on technology transfer to China through Huawei tie-ups with universities.
Huawei Board Director William Xu said in a December blogpost: “We do get useful intellectual property out of some partnerships, but when this happens, the terms are clearly established. For instance, in all the collaborations between Huawei and European research institutes since 2018, only a small portion of resulting IP rights (IPRs) were exclusively granted to Huawei, while most resulting IPRs were exclusively granted to our partners or granted to both parties.”
He noted that even before Huawei arrived on the scene, “universities had a long experience of collaborating with industry. Huawei is one of countless companies engaged in partnerships with universities worldwide. We follow well-established and extremely common practices whenever we initiate collaborations with universities. Even the institutions – primarily US ones – that suspended their relationship with our company are well aware of this; their decision to stop working with us was not the result of Huawei doing anything improper.”
He added: “Although our ultimate focus remains commercial, our interest in basic sciences in many areas now converges with universities’ efforts to expand the boundaries of human knowledge. In the coming years, it is only natural that collaboration between Huawei and universities will become increasingly routine.”
Huawei and other universities
Last year the UK’s University of Oxford said it would no longer accept funding from Huawei, but 17 British universities currently receive funding from the Chinese company. These include Surrey University’s 5G Innovation Centre, Imperial College London and the universities of Edinburgh, Southampton, Cardiff, Manchester and Bristol, with several of them declining to reveal the amount of funding.
The demand for greater transparency and opposition to some types of deals have highlighted some funding deals. In February the London School of Economics (LSE) approved a three-year project on the leadership in the development of 5G technology funded by Huawei.
The NGO openDemocracy said it had obtained access to internal documents that showed the university would receive £105,000 from Huawei for the research, although it is unclear whether it is now going ahead after some academics at the institution raised questions, with some of them concerned the institution had approached Huawei rather than the other way around.
The internal documents state that the LSE has been “chasing” philanthropic funding from China, which is already a source of funding for research. “China and East Asia, in general, will be an important philanthropic market for LSE,” it said.
In May Imperial College London announced a new five-year collaboration with Huawei, with the Chinese company funding a new £5 million technology hub at the university. Huawei will provide the 5G indoor wireless network and AI Cloud platform at one of Imperial’s new campuses.
Ian Walmsley, provost of Imperial College London, said: “Huawei’s expertise in wireless technology will help our researchers, students and partner enterprises to lead the next generation of digital innovations.”
“Imperial, like other UK universities, has received support from Huawei for high-quality and open research for several years, and we are continuing this work,” a spokesman at Imperial College London said. “Such funding continues to be subject to the college’s robust relationship review policies.”
But former Conservative party leader Iain Duncan Smith, a high-profile opponent of Huawei’s involvement in UK infrastructure, called the Imperial-Huawei deal “deeply worrying and dangerous”.
“This is a perfect example of how the Chinese strategy is to use their money to insert their influence in the world’s intellectual thought process,” he said.
In November last year the parliamentary Foreign Affairs Select Committee said in a report that countries including China were seeking to influence universities. Funding and investment agreements could, for example, include “explicit or implicit limits” on what subjects could be discussed, while institutions had also been pressured not to invite certain speakers, or not to disseminate certain papers, the report A Cautious Embrace: Defending democracy in an age of autocracies found.
“We heard alarming evidence about the extent of Chinese influence on the campuses of UK universities,” the committee said.
Need to manage risk
Kerry Brown, director of the Lau China Institute at King’s College London, said in a report released on 9 July by the UK-based think tank Higher Education Policy Institute: “All universities must think through, and rapidly adopt, a risk management strategy for any dealings with China. This should cover all areas of intellectual enquiry. It should spell out clearly and without naivety the risks, and opportunities, of doing work with China and on China. It should also offer some ideas on how to manage issues such as demands from Chinese partners.
“They need to be ready to say no to demands or issues from China that they feel violate their own values, but ensure they do this in a neutral and respectful way,” he said in the report on UK Universities and China.
In the same report, Rana Mitter, director of the University of Oxford China Centre, noted pressures from China for some universities to accept restrictions when they sign agreements.
“Voices from China’s establishment imply that they can easily take their students elsewhere,” he said.
However, he also noted: “The number of first-tier academic environments in the world is not that large. Chinese access to the higher education sector in the UK is welcome, but it is not a right, nor simply a consumer good to be accepted or rejected at will.”
While the UK Government works to prevent Huawei from infiltrating its university system (see story below), Australia continues to do nothing about the matter of Huawei & iFlytek's entry into Australia's academic networks via CPC linked Zhu Minshen and his Top Group:
iFlytek & Huawei formed a strategic partnership in 2018, collaborated since 2010: NSW LPAB , Law Council Australia still silent about their approval of Zhu Minshen's Law School & his business with iFlytek given the Uyghur persecution
Australia will spend $250 Billion to deter China, but will not stop IFlytek-Huawei from infiltrating government departments; akin to buying China made Long March rockets to defend Australia
It does look as if the responsible regulator, the NSW Legal Profession Admission Board is the problem. Chaired by the Chief Justice Of NSW Tom Bathurst, the NSW LPAB has a culture of secrecy and cover-ups grounded in a sense of judicial immunity. That sense of immunity has not however prevented an investigation of its failures in Malaysia:
Malaysia will investigate NSW AG and LPAB oversight of the College Of Law: College's Malaysian business removes protective mantle; likely to further expose LPAB Annual report exclusions
TO BE READ WITH
Scrutiny over Huawei university ties increases after ban
The UK government announced on 14 July that the purchase of new Huawei equipment for high speed 5G networks will be banned at the end of 2020, and all Huawei equipment will be removed from UK 5G networks by 2027 following a review by the government’s National Cyber Security Centre. The United States and Australia have also banned Huawei from public contracts.
The United States has been lobbying its allies to exclude Huawei equipment on security grounds, arguing that the Chinese government can use Huawei as leverage to disrupt vital communications networks in foreign countries. Huawei has consistently denied it assists the Chinese government efforts to spy on mobile communications.
The decision was preceded by considerable debate on China’s influence, including on universities.
US lobbying extended to attempts to block local planning permission for a new £1 billion (US$1.3 billion) Huawei research hub on the outskirts of Cambridge, approved last month. Keith Krach, US under-secretary of state for economic growth, energy and the environment, said in advance of permission being granted that Huawei was “after the people and technology. They want to co-opt the researchers and talent from one of the most prestigious universities.”
Permission was granted on 24 June at a local district committee hearing, which, unusually for this type of local issue, was attended by ambassadors from a number of European countries who wanted to observe the proceedings.
Huawei announced on 26 June that the hub would specialise in fibre optics communications technology. Huawei Vice President Victor Zhang said in a statement that it was not linked to recent US sanctions on Huawei. “Huawei began developing plans for this site more than three years ago, in 2017, so well before the subject of Huawei and 5G was raised in the UK.”
College group demands transparency
With considerable Huawei investment in Cambridge, a major technology hub, student groups in Cambridge have stepped up demands for more transparency in university dealings with Huawei, and China in general, particularly because of ethical concerns over the national security law imposed on Hong Kong by Beijing and human rights abuses in Xinjiang.
Earlier this month the student union at Jesus College, Cambridge University raised “grave concerns” about the college’s ties to Beijing in a letter to the college head or ‘Master’, Sonita Alleyne.
The student union had called for a college commitment to accept no further funding or donations from Huawei and demanded an investigation into the college’s China Centre. The college accepted £155,000 in September 2019 from Huawei for a ‘two-year research cooperation’ under the centre, which resulted in a white paper on global telecommunications reform. Students said the white paper portrayed Huawei in a favourable light.
The paper attracted attention beyond the university, including from MPs on the UK’s Foreign Affairs Select Committee, which said the report from a prestigious university amounted to “reputation laundering” by Huawei.
Matthew Henderson, of the Henry Jackson Society, a foreign policy think tank in London which focuses on open democracy, commented at the time: “It is deeply disturbing that Huawei has been able to buy itself a publication endorsed by Cambridge University.”
The China Centre’s website said its team “organises seminars and workshops, hosting speakers with a wide array of views”.
According to participants, the Huawei-funded report was based on a conference held at the centre and included representatives of Facebook Europe, Google, Vodaphone, Alibaba and international bodies such as the International Telecommunication Union, the OECD, the UN trade and development agency UNCTAD, as well as prominent figures such as former Australian prime minister, Kevin Rudd.
“We think the China Centre occupies an important role in [Jesus] College, and we are keen to work constructively with College to reform the Centre so that it better represents the values of financial transparency, academic freedom and political independence,” the student union letter said and called on Alleyne to commit to the centre hosting events on Chinese human rights abuses as well as the situation in Hong Kong.
College response
Alleyne said in an email to the college community, including alumni, that the college was beginning a review of some of its ‘historic collaborations’. “This includes our connections with China, some of which date back many years,” she said in the email dated 9 July and seen by University World News.
It includes the Jesus College China Centre as well as a separate UK-China Global Issues Dialogue Centre run by the college, which also receives Huawei funding.
Alleyne said the current two-year agreement between the Dialogue Centre and Huawei included a clause “enshrining academic freedom and free speech written into the research collaboration agreement. The Dialogue Centre owns all research results; Huawei cannot veto research findings, the publication of views or conclusions.
“We are cognisant of the rapidly changing situation in China, particularly in relation to human rights. At this crucial time, it is important that we as an academic institution remain committed to dialogue and intellectual discourse between China and the West.”
Jesus College has also revealed under a request under the UK’s Freedom of Information Act submitted by The Times newspaper that it had received £200,000 in September 2018 from China’s State Council – equivalent to the cabinet and headed by Premier Li Keqiang – for the separate UK-China Global Issues Dialogue Centre set up by the college at that time in collaboration with Tsinghua University in Beijing, which has also been a focus of the student union’s concerns.
The United States has also particularly focused its lobbying on technology transfer to China through Huawei tie-ups with universities.
Huawei Board Director William Xu said in a December blogpost: “We do get useful intellectual property out of some partnerships, but when this happens, the terms are clearly established. For instance, in all the collaborations between Huawei and European research institutes since 2018, only a small portion of resulting IP rights (IPRs) were exclusively granted to Huawei, while most resulting IPRs were exclusively granted to our partners or granted to both parties.”
He noted that even before Huawei arrived on the scene, “universities had a long experience of collaborating with industry. Huawei is one of countless companies engaged in partnerships with universities worldwide. We follow well-established and extremely common practices whenever we initiate collaborations with universities. Even the institutions – primarily US ones – that suspended their relationship with our company are well aware of this; their decision to stop working with us was not the result of Huawei doing anything improper.”
He added: “Although our ultimate focus remains commercial, our interest in basic sciences in many areas now converges with universities’ efforts to expand the boundaries of human knowledge. In the coming years, it is only natural that collaboration between Huawei and universities will become increasingly routine.”
Huawei and other universities
Last year the UK’s University of Oxford said it would no longer accept funding from Huawei, but 17 British universities currently receive funding from the Chinese company. These include Surrey University’s 5G Innovation Centre, Imperial College London and the universities of Edinburgh, Southampton, Cardiff, Manchester and Bristol, with several of them declining to reveal the amount of funding.
The demand for greater transparency and opposition to some types of deals have highlighted some funding deals. In February the London School of Economics (LSE) approved a three-year project on the leadership in the development of 5G technology funded by Huawei.
The NGO openDemocracy said it had obtained access to internal documents that showed the university would receive £105,000 from Huawei for the research, although it is unclear whether it is now going ahead after some academics at the institution raised questions, with some of them concerned the institution had approached Huawei rather than the other way around.
The internal documents state that the LSE has been “chasing” philanthropic funding from China, which is already a source of funding for research. “China and East Asia, in general, will be an important philanthropic market for LSE,” it said.
In May Imperial College London announced a new five-year collaboration with Huawei, with the Chinese company funding a new £5 million technology hub at the university. Huawei will provide the 5G indoor wireless network and AI Cloud platform at one of Imperial’s new campuses.
Ian Walmsley, provost of Imperial College London, said: “Huawei’s expertise in wireless technology will help our researchers, students and partner enterprises to lead the next generation of digital innovations.”
“Imperial, like other UK universities, has received support from Huawei for high-quality and open research for several years, and we are continuing this work,” a spokesman at Imperial College London said. “Such funding continues to be subject to the college’s robust relationship review policies.”
But former Conservative party leader Iain Duncan Smith, a high-profile opponent of Huawei’s involvement in UK infrastructure, called the Imperial-Huawei deal “deeply worrying and dangerous”.
“This is a perfect example of how the Chinese strategy is to use their money to insert their influence in the world’s intellectual thought process,” he said.
In November last year the parliamentary Foreign Affairs Select Committee said in a report that countries including China were seeking to influence universities. Funding and investment agreements could, for example, include “explicit or implicit limits” on what subjects could be discussed, while institutions had also been pressured not to invite certain speakers, or not to disseminate certain papers, the report A Cautious Embrace: Defending democracy in an age of autocracies found.
“We heard alarming evidence about the extent of Chinese influence on the campuses of UK universities,” the committee said.
Need to manage risk
Kerry Brown, director of the Lau China Institute at King’s College London, said in a report released on 9 July by the UK-based think tank Higher Education Policy Institute: “All universities must think through, and rapidly adopt, a risk management strategy for any dealings with China. This should cover all areas of intellectual enquiry. It should spell out clearly and without naivety the risks, and opportunities, of doing work with China and on China. It should also offer some ideas on how to manage issues such as demands from Chinese partners.
“They need to be ready to say no to demands or issues from China that they feel violate their own values, but ensure they do this in a neutral and respectful way,” he said in the report on UK Universities and China.
In the same report, Rana Mitter, director of the University of Oxford China Centre, noted pressures from China for some universities to accept restrictions when they sign agreements.
“Voices from China’s establishment imply that they can easily take their students elsewhere,” he said.
However, he also noted: “The number of first-tier academic environments in the world is not that large. Chinese access to the higher education sector in the UK is welcome, but it is not a right, nor simply a consumer good to be accepted or rejected at will.”
