Belgian university closes its Chinese state-funded Confucius Institute after spying claims

• Song Xinning, former head of the Confucius institute at Vrije Universiteit Brussel, is a recruiter for Chinese intelligence and conducts espionage for China.
• The Belgian university says cooperating with the Chinese espionage is no longer consistent with its policies

By Stuart Lau

Confucius Institutes, the long arm of Chinese, espionage, have been established in almost 500 higher education institutions globally. 

One of Belgium’s leading universities has decided to close the Chinese state-funded
Confucius Institute on its campus, following accusations that the former head professor conducted
espionage for China.
Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) confirmed that it would not extend its contract with the institute when the agreement expires next June, although it did not refer to the espionage claims.
The university said cooperation with Confucius Institute – whose stated aims include promoting Chinese language and culture and facilitating cultural exchanges – was “not in line with [our] principles of free research”, based on the information it had obtained.
“The university is of the opinion that cooperating with the institution is no longer consistent with its policies and objectives,” it said in a statement on its website.

Leading Chinese spy Song Xinning, pictured in 2016 at the University of Helsinki’s Confucius Institute, has been barred from entering a bloc of European countries. 

In October, Belgian security services accused Song Xinning, former head of the Confucius Institute at VUB, of working as a recruiter for Chinese intelligence.
The Belgian newspaper De Morgen reported that pro-China VUB had ignored a warning from the state security service about the institute’s activities.

Song was subsequently barred from entering the Schengen Area – comprising 26 European countries – for eight years.
In an earlier interview with the South China Morning Post, Song said Belgian immigration authorities had informed him on July 30 that his visa would not be renewed, because he “supported Chinese intelligence activities”.

Jonathan Holslag, an international relations professor at VUB and one of the most vocal critics of VUB’s Confucius Institute, called the university’s decision “brave”.
“This should stand as an example for many European universities,” he said. 

“It is also in the interest of Chinese students, because they are the main victims of the politicisation of academic exchanges and the suspicion that elicits.”
Confucius Institutes, which are overseen by China’s Ministry of Education, have been set up in more than 480 higher education institutions around the world. 

Over the past decade, they have come under increased scrutiny from Western governments over their links to Chinese espionage activities.Several of the institutes in the United States and Australia have been forced to close because of their undue influence on campus, while several Chinese "academics" and "researchers" have been investigated, dismissed and arrested in the US on charges of stealing intellectual property or failing to disclose funding ties with Chinese universities.
In Europe, the Confucius Institutes at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands, Stockholm University in Sweden and University Lyon in France have all been closed.

Belgium — Den of Chinese spies and gateway for China

The host to EU institutions and NATO headquarters, the European nation is an alluring draw card for China: 250 Chinese spies were working in Brussels — more than from Russia.

By Alan Crawford and Peter Martin 

When a suspected Chinese spy was extradited to the US last year, the US Department of Justice praised the “significant assistance” given by authorities in Belgium.
Xu Yanjun was arrested in Belgium after going there to meet a contact “for the purpose of discussing and receiving the sensitive information he had requested,” the US indictment said.
Xu was charged with attempting to commit economic espionage, with GE Aviation the main target. The case is pending.
Belgium might seem an unlikely destination for a Chinese agent, but it is a den of spies, the Belgian State Security Service (VSSE) says.

It says the number of operatives is at least as high as during the Cold War and Brussels is their “chessboard.”
Host to the EU’s institutions and NATO headquarters, Belgium is an alluring draw card for aspiring espionage-makers. 

Diplomats, lawmakers and military officials mingle, sharing gossip and ideas, while Belgium’s strategic location makes it important to China in its own right as a place to exert its influence in Europe.
“The mere fact that we hold international institutions such as NATO and the EU makes Belgium a natural focus for China,” Brussels-based Egmont Royal Institute for International Relations research fellow Bruno Hellendorff said. 

“It’s common knowledge that there are many spies in Brussels, and these days espionage from China is a major and growing concern.”
German newspaper Die Welt in February cited an unpublished assessment by the EU’s European External Action Service that about 250 Chinese spies were working in Brussels — more than from Russia.

Famous Chinese spy Song Xinning

Song Xinning, a Chinese director of the Confucius Institute at VUB Brussels University, was in October barred from entering the EU Schengen area for eight years after being accused of espionage.
An insight into the methods employed by China are outlined in the Xu indictment.

His duties included obtaining trade secrets from aviation and aerospace companies in the US, “and throughout Europe.”He used aliases and invited experts on paid trips to China to deliver presentations at Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, operated by the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. 

He ensured targets carried a work computer whose data could be captured.
The US remains at the core of Beijing’s espionage activities — the head of the FBI in July said that China was trying to “steal their way up the economic ladder at our expense.”
Yet Europe appears increasingly in focus, with cases of interference by China identified in Poland, France, Germany and the UK.
“The Chinese are becoming far more active than they were 10 or 20 years ago,” said former British diplomat Charles Parton, who has more than two decades of experience of China.
Espionage is “the far end of the spectrum” of interference that ranges from academia to “technological spillover” — collecting data to send back to China for mining, London-based Royal United Services Institute senior associate fellow Parton said.
Belgium’s elite generally has a relaxed attitude toward China that can open it to charges of complacency. 

A fractured political system makes it harder to craft a unified strategy — there is still no government six months after elections.A delegation to China this month included four ministers responsible for trade relations — a federal minister plus one each for Dutch-speaking Flanders, Francophone Wallonia and Brussels.
Even as the EU adopts a more skeptical stance toward China — losing its naivety, as one senior European official put it — Belgium is opening the gates to Chinese investments in strategic areas from energy to shipping and technology.
Belgium is responding to China’s rise “in a pragmatic way,” stressing its advantages in areas such as logistics, while ensuring “attention to the sustainability of the projects and respect for international standards,” the Belgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said.
“They [Belgium] have very advanced technologies that China needs,” said Renmin University Institute of International Affairs director Wang Yiwei 王義桅, a former Chinese diplomat based in Brussels. 

“Through Brussels you can access Europe and even the United States.”
He said that Chinese innovation is fast catching up with the US.
All nations make efforts to win over hearts and minds, and much influence-building is legitimate diplomatic activity, but there is also a gray zone and it can be “difficult to tell the hand of the Chinese state from a much more diffuse web of influence-peddling,” the European Council on Foreign Relations said in a 2017 report.

Flemish Quislings

Brecht Vermeulen, chairman of the Belgian parliament’s home affairs committee until losing his seat this year, joined parliament’s China friendship group soon after his election in 2014 as a lawmaker for the Flemish nationalist N-VA party, the largest group in the then-ruling coalition.
Over the course of his five-year term, Vermeulen made several trips to China, where officials briefed him on technological advances in artificial intelligence, facial recognition and cybersecurity.
During that time, N-VA policy evolved from sympathizing with efforts by some in Taiwan and Hong Kong to keep a distance from China, toward what Vermeulen called “Realpolitik.”
“I think we must open more doors to the Chinese and see how they react,” Vermeulen said in an interview in Ghent. 

“If they open their doors, too, then it’s good on both sides. Of course, we are a small country and China is enormous, but if we act in one way and there’s a reaction in the same way, then OK, we can proceed, step by step.”
Still, there are signs that the Belgian authorities are attuned to potential threats.
State Grid Corp of China, which has more employees than Brussels has inhabitants, in 2016 bid for a stake in energy company Eandis. 

A last-minute leak of a VSSE dossier urged “extreme caution,” citing the risk that Belgian technology could be used by the Chinese military, and a planned vote on the bid never took place.
Engaging with China’s influence apparatus is not without risks.
Filip Dewinter, a regional lawmaker with the far-right Vlaams Belang party, was investigated over his ties to an organization suspected of spying for China. 

The probe was dropped after it was found Dewinter had committed no crime.
“Maybe I had too much faith in these people,” De Morgen cited Dewinter as saying in February, adding that he was now “more informed” about Chinese espionage and the need “to be careful.”
However, while there is now “some strategic thinking” on China in Belgium, the institutional setup means it is not across the board, Hellendorff said.
He sees “little to no dialogue between regions on the implications of growing Chinese investment in the country, not only in economic terms, but also in terms of its impact on values and influence.”That lack of coordination between regions and layers of government allows Antwerp Mayor Bart de Wever to play an outsize role in ties with Beijing. 

Antwerp is home to Europe’s second-largest port and has a direct rail link to China.
Wang thinks bilateral relations are developing well.
“In Europe there’s a saying that small is beautiful,” Wang said. 

“Belgium is beautiful in the Chinese understanding.”

Chinese spy barred from entering Schengen Area

• Song Xinning, former head of Confucius Institute at Vrije Universiteit Brussel, worked as a recruiter for Chinese intelligence
• The Chinese spy has been banned from 26-nation free-travel zone for eight years

By Kinling Lo, Simone McCarthy, Stuart Lau, Keegan Elmer

A Chinese professor who headed a Confucius Institute in Brussels has been barred from entering the Schengen Area for eight years after being accused of espionage, amid growing scrutiny of the Beijing-run cultural offices that have been established at universities around the world.
Song Xinning, former director of the institute at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), had been accused by authorities in Belgium of supporting Chinese intelligence activities in the city.
The Schengen Area comprises 26 European countries that have abolished passport and other types of controls at their mutual borders.
The Belgian newspaper De Morgen reported on Tuesday that VUB had ignored a warning from the State Security Service about the institute’s activities. 

Song had acted as a recruiter for Chinese intelligence services and hired informants from the Chinese student and business communities in Belgium.
The Belgian government did not immediately reply to requests for comment.

Famous Chinese spy Song Xinning.

Song is also a professor at Renmin University in Beijing.

He said he suspected the decision to impose the ban had been influenced by the United States FBI.

The Chinese spy speaks at the Confucius Institute of the University of Helsinki in 2016. 

Song said he was told by the Belgian embassy in Beijing in September about the ban on him entering the Schengen Area. 

He is now appealing the ruling with the help of a Belgian lawyer, who Song said was in possession of a report from Belgium’s security services that accused the academic of having ties to Chinese security officials, luring Belgian scholars to spy for China and making plans to retire to Belgium.
Song said he did know Geng Huichang, a former Chinese state security minister, as they had both taught at Renmin University, and admitted to mingling with European scholars at academic conferences in China.

Confucius Institutes, which are overseen by China’s education ministry, have been set up in more than 480 higher education institutions around the world. 

Over the past decade they have come under increased scrutiny from Western governments over their espionage activities.
Several institutes in the US and Australia have been forced to close due to allegations they had undue influence on campus, while several Chinese academics and researchers have been investigated, dismissed and arrested in the US on accusations of stealing intellectual property or failing to disclose funding ties with Chinese universities.
In Europe, the Confucius Institutes at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands, Stockholm University in Sweden and University Lyon in France have all been closed. 

And the British Conservative Party’s human rights commission earlier this year launched a campaign for schools to stop partnering with the institutes pending the results of a review.
Ingrid d’Hooghe, a researcher at the Leiden Asia Centre and Clingendael Institute who specialises in higher educational ties between Europe and China, said scrutiny of Chinese academics was increasing in Europe.
Song’s case was an example of how authorities in Europe have been watching China more closely, she said. 

The Chinese spy, who has now returned to his job at Renmin University, spent three years living in Brussels with his wife. 

He also worked from 2007-10 at UNU-CRIS, a United Nations research institute in Bruges.
Song is expected to be replaced at VUB by Zhou Jun from Sichuan University, who is currently awaiting his visa.
Professor Jonathan Holslag, who works at VUB and is also a special adviser to the European Commission, said it was “not a surprise” that Song had been banned from entering Belgium.
“Song is a polite guy but the institute is clearly an instrument of propaganda … and shouldn’t be part of the academic community,” he said.
The worrying part was its ability to “identify young and bright students with a potential to join the EU at a later stage” and to influence young European students with an uncritical, positive view about China, he said.