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Alex Lo

Oh dear, the son of a fugitive Chinese tycoon turned out to be the sole donor of millions of pounds to a China-focused think tank at one of Britain’s top universities. That’s the Lau China Institute at King’s College London.
It just fits so well with a wider narrative that the Communist Party of China, especially through its United Front work, has infiltrated higher education in the UK. I have to admit I was hooked at first sight.
And then, the name was finally revealed.
“99.9% of the Institute’s funding comes from a single donor from Hong Kong in the People’s Republic of China, Mr Lau Ming-wai. Lau has given at least £11 million [HK$113 million],” according to a new report by UK-China Transparency, a non-profit group. Lau was subsequently made a fellow of King’s College. Money can buy you any academic title, can’t it now?
I don’t know Lau personally, but have interviewed him several times over the course of my career as a reporter and met him again in social settings. So I have had to dig up his CV on various occasions in the past.
He is not dodgy at all. In fact, I have always been amazed at how well he turned out as a person, considering who his father is. Think of many others who were born with a silver spoon in their mouths, like Prince Harry.
So who is Lau Ming-wai?
“Lau held jobs in Hong Kong government advisory bodies, including promoting integration with China, although it did not suggest any wrongdoing.”
That’s according to Zoe Frechin-Pollard, a reporter for Nikkei Asia, with her piece titled “Top London university urged to open up about China centre funding: Academics call for donation-reporting requirements over fears of undue influence”, which is based almost entirely on the Transparency report.
What a strange way to end her sentence. Suppose I wrote something like: “So and so worked for various UK government advisory bodies, including promoting integration with Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland, although it did not suggest any wrongdoing.” What kind of impression has that created? No wrongdoing, or something dodgy?
The report by UK-China Transparency helpfully dives into greater detail. Among those bodies are: the Greater Pearl River Delta Business Council (because Lau is a businessman?), the Youth Development Commission (brainwashing the young?), the 11th Congress of the Sichuan Province Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference … It claims some of Lau’s roles tied him to the Communist Party’s United Front. I lost it at this point. Seriously.
I am surprised the Transparency report didn’t mention Lau was an adviser to failed Hong Kong chief executive candidate Henry Tang Ying-yen. Was that not the Lau family’s sinister attempt to take over Hong Kong behind the scenes?
That’s one way to characterise Lau. Let me offer an alternative, which may also be relevant, but apparently not to Transparency and Nikkei Asia.
Lau received his LLB and PhD in law from King’s College. His LLM is from the London School of Economics and Political Science. His academic credentials are real.
I once skimmed through his PhD thesis, which was on trusts and their economics under British common law, and was subsequently published by Oxford University Press (OUP) as The Economic Structure of Trusts: Towards a Property-based Approach.
Does that mean Chinese communist influence has now infiltrated UK academic publishing? UK-China Transparency ought to investigate OUP, too!
Lau has also been a visiting lecturer at Harvard Law School.
So, a scholar before he took over the family property business, and whose father is one of Hong Kong’s richest men, has been donating large sums to his alma mater in the UK. Shocking!
The elder Joseph Lau Luen-hung, as the report accurately noted, is a fugitive from Macau law after being convicted on corruption charges in 2014. The absence of an extradition law has worked to his enormous advantage. In fact, it was Hong Kong’s attempt to legislate extradition arrangements between mainland China, Taiwan, Macau and Hong Kong that triggered the unprecedented anti-government riots in 2019.
So, thanks to those rioters, the elder Lau remains free. He is, however, loved by the local tabloid press because he periodically ran extended press conferences to talk about his personal life, the last one being held in November last year.
A colourful character, he overshares information about his numerous past girlfriends – among them a top beauty queen, a well-known barrister, a chemical engineer, and an entertainment news reporter (his current wife). He also likes to talk about his own private health concerns in some embarrassing detail and is not averse to telling rude sex jokes at his own expense. The local paparazzi lap it all up.
One of his former girlfriends, Yvonne Lui Pui-lam, with whom he has two children, holds a doctorate in chemical engineering from King’s College – yes, his son’s alma mater. One of her co-authored papers has this title: “Neutron diffraction studies of the hydration structure around guest molecules before and during gas hydrate formation.”
The Laus certainly have a strong connection with King’s College.
But, as I have said, I have always found the younger Lau remarkable, as he is discreet, well-mannered and well-spoken, and reserved. I once ran into him travelling on the MTR, Hong Kong’s railway system, with his wife and a backpack on his back.
Not satisfied that the university has provided a detailed breakdown of the young Lau’s donations over the years, UK-China Transparency is now taking legal action to obtain the Lau institute’s internal email communications, the number and nature of Lau’s visits to the institute, and documentary proof that Lau may or may not have imposed conditions on his donations. I have it on excellent authority that they came with no strings attached.
But who are these “transparency” people anyway? Well, a look at their lists of trustees and advisers shows up the usual suspects. Some of them have a serious ideological or personal axe to grind.
One Transparency adviser is Simon Cheng Man-kit. While an employee of the British consulate in Hong Kong, he was detained for more than two weeks for soliciting prostitution on the mainland in 2019.
After he was released, he moved to the UK where he joined or set up various anti-China groups, resulting in charges against him under Hong Kong’s national security law, with a HK$1 million bounty on his head.
Another adviser is David Tobin, of the School of East Asian studies at the University of Sheffield, who advocates charges of genocide against Beijing over its treatment of the Uygurs in Xinjiang. A third is Howard Zhang, former head of the BBC’s Chinese Service and a fierce critic of China.
The Transparency director is Sam Dunning, who is also a trustee. He is an investigative journalist who specialises in “exposing” China. You can look up a list of his publications via a link in his biography on the Transparency website.
Interestingly, the Transparency report also lists publications by Lau China Institute director Kerry Brown in China Daily and the Beijing Review, thus insinuating a connection between his public views and his institute’s primary source of donations.
If Brown’s articles are dodgy in one way, Dunning’s are so in the opposite way. But at least Brown’s are a little more nuanced.
The real question is, what reputable news groups will give such a report the time of day. Well, now we know.
I have no interest in defending the younger Lau. But I read the Hong Kong tabloid press as much as the next person, and am always entertained and amused whenever there is news about the latest antics of the elder Lau.
But I find it worth going into some detail here because they expose such specious reports as Transparency’s, often hinting at wrongdoing and guilt by association based on little or no factual substance. They are typical of what nowadays passes for Anglo-American journalism and NGO investigations, especially when it comes to coverage of China.


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Opinion

Hong Kong Opinion

New report by UK-China Transparency attacks top China think tank and key donor from Hong Kong


New report by UK-China Transparency attacks top China think tank and key donor from Hong Kong.


My Take

Hong Kong

Expresses the views, ideas and conclusions of the author. (Eg. Enough of Crazy Rich Asians, think of crazy poor Hongkongers.)


Column

My Take | Hong Kong fugitive Simon Cheng linked to anti-China NGO in Britain

New report by UK-China Transparency attacks top China think tank and key donor from Hong Kong