An academic with apparent connections to the Chinese Communist party has forged links inside the UK parliament and met King Charles andQueen Camilla.
Yu Xiong, a professor of business analytics at the University of Surrey and a cryptocurrency entrepreneur, has attended a dozen events in the House of Lords since 2022 and had regular contact with peers including Baroness Uddin, a cross-bencher.
Xiong appears to be connected to the Chinese Communist party (CCP), having until May 2023 led a branch of the Western Returned Scholars Association (WRSA),which states that it is “managed by”the United Front Work Department. He was president of the UK branch of the WRSA, representing Chongqing, China’s largest city.
Described by the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, as his party’s “magic weapon”, the United Front exists to advance China’s aims abroad. Under party regulations, its principles include “upholding the leadership of the CCP” and opposing Taiwanese independence.
Security agencies in the UK, US and other western countries have issued public warnings about the United Front’s activities. Ken McCallum, the director general of MI5, said in 2022 that the United Front was mounting “patient, well-funded, deceptive campaigns to buy and exert influence”.
Xiong has also attended at least three meetings in 2023 and 2024 with Chinese officials to discuss advancing their controversial plans for a new mega-embassy in Tower Hamlets. The plans were originally blocked by the local council but are being reconsidered by ministers after China resubmitted its application last year.
His apparent connections to the Chinese government are likely to come under scrutiny as ministers in the UK target parts of the Chinese state under new foreign influence rules.
Xiong denies that he is linked to the United Front and strongly rejects that he has extensive connections to the CCP. He said he had not attended any meetings of the WRSA since 2019, and that he had allowed his role as UK president to lapse in 2023.
Xiong said the WRSA obtains its relevant permissions from the United Front, along with many other associations with hundreds of millions of members between them. Through his solicitors, Xiong stated that it is “absurd”, “grossly unfair”, and “overly simplistic” to identify him as someone with links to the United Front and said that it was disingenuous and racist to connect him with the CCP.
“In my role as an associate vice-president and academic, I am required to network with political figures in the UK and stakeholders across the globe in order to advance international cooperation in my field for the benefit of Surrey University. There is nothing unusual about my membership of various Chinese academic/trade associations.”
Uddin said she had not been aware of Xiong’s role with the WRSA before she was contacted by the Guardian, but stressed that there was nothing improper about their friendship. The pair collaborated on an all-party parliamentary group (APPG) and attended meetings together in London, China and Bangladesh, including one with the Chinese ambassador to Dhaka.
Experts said that Xiong’s role as UK president suggested “a high level of integration into the CCP-led United Front system” and “should trigger further scrutiny of the WRSA’s activities in the UK”.
Alex Joske, a director at the Australian consultancy McGrathNicol who is an expert on the WRSA, said the United Front “plays a fundamental role in expanding the CCP’s political influence internationally, and it has sought to mobilise its international contacts in support of Chinese government interests. Prof Xiong’s connections into UK politics should trigger further scrutiny of the WRSA’s activities in the UK.”
Xiong has established connections inside parliament and briefly met the king and queen. In June 2023, Xiong posted on LinkedIn that he had met King Charles while attending a charity ball at St James Palace, saying the men “discussed AI and technologies that will change the world”. In October that year, he posted that he had a “private meeting” with Paul Scully, then technology minister, through his role at Surrey University.
Since 2022, Xiong has attended at least a dozen events in the House of Lords on digital technology and interacted with Uddin and Lord Taylor of Warwick, cross-bench peers who were formerly affiliated with Labour and the Conservatives respectively. Xiong said there was nothing improper about his interactions with politicians, businesspeople and members of the royal family.
Xiong addressed several of the events he attended in parliament in his capacity as an adviser to theall-party parliamentary group on the metaverse and web 3.0, which was co-chaired by Uddin until parliament was dissolved in May 2024 for the election.
The APPG’s secretariat was run by the UK International Innovation Centre (UKIIC), a company that listed Xiong among its directors until April 2024. The UKIIC, whose website was taken down for several months after the Guardian’s inquiries, stated its aims as “upgrading China’s soft power and international influence”. Xiong said he was not aware this phrase had appeared on the website and he did not share that aim.
At the same time as forging connections in British politics and academia, Xiong has been an outspoken supporter of Beijing’s foreign policy aims, including its claim over Taiwan. In 2023, Xiong was quoted in a Chinese state media article about a meeting between Xi and the Central Committee of the Communist Youth League. According to the report, he said: “As new immigrants in the UK, we will leverage the unique advantages of Chinese people overseas in promoting the complete reunification of the motherland” – a reference to China’s claim over self-governing Taiwan.
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Xiong’s solicitors in response said that he “considers that any peaceful resolution of the issues between China and Taiwan is better than a non-peaceful one”. They said: “Our client is not a politician, and his views about reintegration of Taiwan into China are informed only by his desire to see a peaceful outcome.
“His comments were made shortly after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which caused many people to consider how other territorial disputes could best be resolved peacefully. None of our client’s views on this subject should be taken to mean that he does not respect the Taiwanese people’s right to self-determination, which is absolute.”
In 2019, he was pictured in the VIP section of the celebrations for the 70th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China on Tiananmen Square in Beijing. He was invited to attend by the Organisation Department, one of the most important organs of the CCP, which oversees staffing in the party. Through his lawyers, Xiong rejected the suggestion that his attendance at the celebrations on Tiananmen Square represented a relationship with the CCP or the United Front.
In December 2023 and February and March 2024, Xiong attended meetings with Chinese officials, which were held to discuss ways of progressing proposals to build a super-embassy at Royal Mint Court, according to evidence seen by the Guardian. Present at all three meetings was Xia Yuzi, the Chinese embassy official responsible for the planning application.
The Guardian has seen a business proposal addressed to Xiong by a third party after one of the meetings offering to advise the Chinese embassy on the matter. Dated March 2023, the proposal said it was “a pleasure to sit down with the key people in the proposed project of the Chinese embassy at Royal Mint Court”, adding: “We would be happy to help you on an advisory basis.”
Xiong accepted that he received the proposal but said it was unsolicited. After being told there were text messages showing he asked for costs and timeframes, Xiong said that he offered to review the proposal as a way of rejecting it and that he never passed it on to the Chinese embassy. He strongly denied acting as an interlocutor between the embassy and other parties.
Uddin, a former Labour councillor in Tower Hamlets, was present at two of the meetings with Chinese embassy officials. The peer said she did not know the purpose of the meetings she attended and did not discuss the embassy plans. Messages seen by the Guardian suggest that in late 2023, she sought to arrange a meeting with Xiong and an intermediary to discuss the Chinese embassy. Uddin said this might have been about the embassy’s community impact.
Over the last two years, Xiong and Uddin spent time together abroad in Bangladesh and China. In February 2024, they met Yao Wen, China’s ambassador in Dhaka, and in April they attended a conference in Chongqing aimed at fostering UK-China cooperation.
Separately, draft marketing materials seen by the Guardian list both Taylor and Uddin as advisers to the “Thames Fund”, an investment fund by a crypto company named JKL Capital, where Xiong is a director.
Taylor declared he was a paid consultant to JKL Capital between November 2023 and December 2024, when he removed the entry from his register of interests after the Guardian started making inquiries. He said the entry had been made in error.
Both Uddin and Taylor said that they had never heard of the Thames Fund and were unaware they had been pictured on its marketing materials. Xiong said the document was a draft which had only been circulated internally, and that the Thames Fund did not exist yet. He said no one had been paid by JKL Capital in the UK.
Additional research by Jason Tzu Kuan Lu