Mystery of Cambridge University's £3.7 million Chinese benefactors

The Daily Telegraph has learned that a number of Cambridge teachers object to the substantial gift from the Chong Hua Foundation, which is set to create a new chair of Chinese Development at a new Centre of Development Studies.

The post would be occupied by Professor Peter Nolan, who has links to the family of Wen Jiabao, the Chinese premier.

The donation comes in the wake of the Woolf report on the £1.5 million donation to the London School of Economics by a foundation run by Col Gaddafi's son Saif al-Islam, which placed foreign contributions to cash-strapped British universities under extra scrutiny.

The report into the scandal, which led to the resignation of Sir Howard Davies, the school's director, said that universities needed to ensure their "core values" were reflected in their fund-raising activities, which over past decade have reached an unprecedented scale.

Tarak Barkawi, a senior lecturer in war studies at the Department of Politics and International Studies, where the new post is due to be created, said that "in the wake of the Libya LSE fiasco", Cambridge's conduct was "reckless and simply not good enough".

He and other colleagues are alarmed by the lack of clarity surrounding the origins of the donation, which has been approved by the university's general board and is likely to be confirmed by Regent House, the governing body, next month.

Searches for the Chong Hua Foundation on a list of registered charities at the ministry of civil affairs in Beijing, various charity umbrella groups and China's equivalent of Companies House revealed nothing. Although the exact Chinese characters that Chong Hua translates to are not known, there is a strong likelihood the name means "Respect China".

The official Cambridge announcement on the donation says that the foundation "is focused on advancing education for the benefit of the People's Republic of China".

"Who is this Chong Hua Foundation that is giving us all this money? Where is its website? Who sits on its board? Does it have links to the Chinese government? These are all basic questions that need to be answered," said Mr Barkawi.

He added: "The lack of transparency, clarity and debate regarding the links between the Chong Hua Foundation and the regime is of very serious concern and raises basic questions about the relationship between donors and universities."

Tim Holt, the university's head of communications, said that the donation "has been scrutinised formally by the executive committee of our university council, in line with our published ethical guidelines for the acceptance of donations".

He added: "Our investigation did not identify any link between this private foundation and the Chinese Government."

Pressed for further details, he said that the foundation had been set up by "wealthy individuals who wished to remain anonymous".

Prof Nolan had, he confirmed, identified the foundation as a prospective donor.

Mr Barkawi contended: "In a dictatorship, there is no such thing as an independent educational foundation."

Other Cambridge academics contacted by The Daily Telegraph expressed concern China was being granted an opportunity to deploy "soft power".

A faculty member of the Department of Politics and International Studies, who asked not to named, said: "This is happening around the world. The Chinese are simply buying venerable institutions. It is incumbent for the university to determine precisely the source of these funds."

Critics of Prof Nolan have questioned whether he would be likely to project Chinese views on what Beijing calls its "core interests" such as Tibet and the Dalai Lama, its territorial claims in the South China Sea or its bid for resources in Africa.

In a 2005 article excerpted in the New Statesman from his book, China at the Crossroads, Prof Nolan wrote of the challenge the West's "free market fundamentalism" posed to Beijing. As part of a lengthy opinions given to a House of Commons select committee last July, he described the Communist Party of China as "a very, very capable organisation and it has got more and more capable. It is intensely competitive, meritocratic in fundamental senses".

An acknowledged authority on Chinese business and a frequent visitor to the country, Prof Nolan has co-authored a book and several papers with Liu Chunhang, son-in-law of Wen Jiabao and part of one of the powerful families that control large swathes of the economy.

Mr Liu, 40, is currently the head of both the statistics and research departments at the China Bank Regulatory Commission, highly influential positions in a country where all major banks are owned by the state.

In his current role as Professor of Chinese Management at Cambridge's Judge Business School, Prof Nolan also taught Liu as a postgraduate student and is said to have acted as a tutor to Mr Wen's daughter, Wen Ruchun.

The Daily Telegraph tried to speak to Prof Nolan directly but was told by the press office that he "does not talk to journalists".

On the specific question of teaching Wen Ruchun, the press office said "the university does not retain this level of detail".

Sceptics have asked whether the foundation played any role in the selection of Prof Nolan as the first occupant of the Chong Hua Professorship and as the head of a new Centre of Development Studies, posts he is due to start on March 1.

Mr Barkawi was concerned that the university had "at the very least left the appearance" that there may have been undue influence.

The university responded: "Donors, whether they are governments or private institutions and individuals, are not able to determine either the selection of a candidate for an academic post."

The university has also agreed that the Chong Hua foundation can appoint a person of its choice to the board of senior academics managing the donation.

Beijing has directed substantial resources to improving its reputation, opening English-language newspapers and a string of Confucius Institutes around the world.

When pushed on its human rights abuses, including the ongoing detention of Nobel Peace Laureate Liu Xiaobo, the Chinese authorities frequently cite their country's status as a "developing nation" in mitigation.

Last year Stanford University declined £2.5 million from the Chinese for a Confucius Institute because of a caveat that delicate issues like Tibet couldn't be discussed. Cambridge said there were no such caveats attached to the Chong Hua donation.

In a 2007 speech to the national congress of China's Communist Party, President Hu Jintao described the network of institutes as "part of the soft power of our country", Soft power, or gaining influence through persuasion rather than force, is a "factor of growing significance in the competition in overall national strength," he said.

Cambridge and other British universities have received major donations from other autocracies in recent years. Saudi Arabia gave Cambridge and Edinburgh £8 million each in 2008 to establish centres of Islamic studies. Iran donated £10,000 to the University of Durham two years ago which the head of the university's Centre for Iranian Studies admitted "comes with strings attached".