The Daily Telegraph has published yet another horrified exposé of Chinese influence, this time concerning a generous donation to Cambridge University from Robert Ng, a Hong Kong billionaire and chairman of the Sino Group. Apparently, the problem is that Ng’s son, Daryl Ng, sits on a Communist Party advisory board.
The Telegraph reports this as though it were some kind of scandal, breathlessly informing us that “Cambridge accepted millions from Chinese donor linked to Beijing”. One can imagine the dramatic music swelling in the background.
Let’s get a grip. Every billionaire in China has links to the Communist Party. That is how the country works. If you make a lot of money in China, you are expected to have a friendly relationship with the Government. It is no different from Richard Branson turning up at a garden party to see the King or Jeff Bezos taking a cosy trip to the White House. To act as if Robert Ng being polite to Beijing makes him some kid of Bond villain is absurd.
What makes this article particularly amusing is the hypocrisy of the Daily Telegraph and its ruling-class handlers who say what is to be published. Nowhere will you find them worrying about the billions pumped into British universities by Bill Gates, whose vaccine promotion efforts have arguably done more harm to the world than if he had spent his time selling crack cocaine outside primary schools at 50p a hit.
And what about George Soros, the world’s leading sponsor of globalist tyranny? His money is accepted without a second thought by British universities and political movements. No one at the Telegraph seems troubled that Soros actively finances organisations that destabilise national governments and push radical social engineering. But let a Hong Kong businessman donate to Cambridge, and suddenly it’s a crisis.
Let’s be honest: this isn’t about Cambridge. It isn’t even about Robert Ng. This is just another piece of anti-China propaganda, published by and for a British and American ruling class that is still struggling to come to terms with what they themselves created.
After 1980, Western ruling classes poured investment into China. They shut down their own industries and stuffed their own working classes, and outsourced production to what they assumed would be a permanently subservient nation. They believed they were exchanging the belligerent, strike-happy trade unions of the West for a supply of obedient, sweatshop workers in the East, who would work for sixpence a day while wearing those little blue Maoist tunics.
That is not how things turned out.
Instead, China set about the greatest economic transformation in history. It modernised; it built its own industries; it created its own technology giants; it started challenging Western economic and military dominance. Today, China is the global economic superpower, while much of the West is drowning in debt and dealing with populations increasingly hostile to their own rulers.
No wonder they feel like the Sorcerer’s Apprentice. They thought they were controlling the rise of China. Instead, they accidentally created their greatest competitor. And now, instead of admitting their catastrophic miscalculation, they run around shrieking about “Chinese influence” whenever a rich Hong Kong businessman gives money to a university.
Now, I should say that I took this assignment away from Sebastian Wang, who is too polite and self-deprecating to write an article like this himself. So let me be the one to say it bluntly: I am delighted that the Chinese are rich and powerful.
If someone has to lord it over humanity, I’d much rather it be China than the scumbags in the City of London or the insane neocons in Washington. China, at least, seems to know what it is doing. It builds infrastructure. It invests in industry. It sells things of value to willing buyers. The Western ruling classes, on the other hand, wreck every country they touch, including its own.
So, if Cambridge wants to take money from China, let them. At least China still believes in science and progress. That’s more than can be said for the ruling classes of Britain and America.
