United Front-Linked Group Lauded Yang Tengbo’s Ties To David Cameron
By RFA
By Jane Tang
An organization that bears the hallmarks of a Chinese government influence operation lauded the access alleged Chinese spy Yang Tengbo had to two British prime ministers.
Photographs of Yang, 50, alongside David Cameron and Teresa May were featured as evidence of his influence when he was presented an award by Huarenbang, or the “Chinese People’s List,” in 2019, RFA can reveal.
According to evidence reviewed by RFA, the group has deep ties with China’s United Front Works Department, a Beijing state organ that Western governments have warned conducts covert intelligence and influence activities abroad.
It was disclosed last week that the Chinese businessman who boasts close ties to Prince Andrew had been banned from entering the U.K. for threatening national security.
The ceremony for the prize, called the “Most Achieved Chinese Award,” is held in a different city each year and is attended by numerous high-ranking United Front linked officials. At least five previous awardees are known United Front operatives, RFA found. Giving out these awards is an opportunity for United Front to tout its influence and cultivate targets, China experts say, and photos like these can demonstrate how awardees have made inroads into elite and powerful circles.
One of the photos displayed at Yang’s award presentation showed him alongside Cameron and his wife, along with two other individuals.
It is a different photo of Yang and Cameron to the one that RFA first revealed last week to have been sitting on the Chinese businessman’s desk – a detail that was shown in a 2019 Central Chinese TV broadcast featuring Yang.
In the program, Yang explained that he used his connections in U.K. politics to succeed in establishing business ventures in China.
Yang told the state broadcaster: “In 2013, Prime Minister Cameron held a Chinese New Year reception at his Downing Street Number 10. I attended the reception.” He said the party at the prime minister’s residence became a turning point in his career. A BBC Chinese News story on the reception also reported his attendance, which also included elites from U.K. business and politics.
A voiceover narration in the CCTV report noted that Yang used the occasion to meet and subsequently help a U.K. businessman establish a business in Shanghai, and that this led to further opportunities for Yang to work with other British interests.
Another undated photo in the award presentation was of Yang with Theresa May and her husband, Philip. Cameron was prime minister from 2010 to 2016 and May held the position from 2016 to 2019.
A request for comment to Cameron’s office in which RFA asked about his relationship to Yang and the claims Yang made about his 2013 party was not answered by press time. Theresa May’s office also did not reply by press time, although her spokesperson told the U.K. media that the former prime minister had no recollection of Yang or the photograph.
On Dec. 12, it was revealed that the U.K.’s Special Immigration Appeals Tribunal had ordered that a Chinese national codenamed H6, which an RFA investigation revealed to be Yang, be barred from entering the U.K.
According to the judgement, MI5 — Britain’s domestic intelligence agency — advised that H6 “poses a risk to U.K. national security.” The judgment underscored his ties to Beijing and the Chinese state and noted that he “had been in a position to generate relationships with prominent U.K. figures which could be leveraged for political interference purposes by the CCP (including the UFWD [United Front Works Department]) or the Chinese State.”
On Monday, the court lifted its anonymity order at Yang’s request, confirming his identity.
In a public statement, Yang said he had done nothing wrong or unlawful and called himself a victim of a changed political climate.
“When relations are good, and Chinese investment is sought, I am welcome in the U.K. When relations sour, an anti-China stance is taken,” he wrote. “I built my private life in the U.K. over two decades and love the country as my second home. I would never do anything to harm the interests of the U.K.”
He noted that: “On their own fact finding, even the three judges in this case concluded that there was ‘not an abundance of evidence’ against me, their decision was ‘finely balanced,’ and there could be an ‘innocent explanation’ for my activities. This has not been reported in the media.”
Cheryl Yu, a scholar at the Washington D.C.-based Jamestown Foundation who studies United Front, told RFA: “Individuals like Yang are integral to the CCP’s United Front strategy — a critical element of the Party’s playbook to secure its political interests and embed its narratives in democratic societies.”
A request for comment from Huarenbang was not returned by press time. Beijing has long defended the United Front, saying the group aims primarily to improve national prosperity and happiness, and calling claims of espionage or infiltration “conspiracy theories.”
In a statement issued Friday, the spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in London denounced the judgment as the product of a campaign to “smear China and sabotage normal people-to-people exchanges between China and the U.K.”
Yang’s Most Achieved Chinese Award presentation makes special note of his relationship to Prince Andrew, noting that the businessman “successfully helped introduce to China” a project Prince Andrew led to connect entrepreneurs with investors.
The immigration court order notes that the Chinese embassy shared questions about the Eurasia Fund, a financial initiative of Prince Andrew’s on which Yang assisted. Yang’s own notes for a 2021 meeting with the prince noted it was important to manage expectations as the prince “is in a desperate situation and will grab onto anything.”
The apparent depth of their connection, said the court, underscored how “this kind of relationship could be used for political interference, having regard to the aims of UFWD which include the aims of co-opting and manipulating elite individuals.”
RFA can also reveal that the award was presented to Yang by the late Lady Barbara Singer Judge, the former chairwoman of the U.K. Atomic Energy Authority and the Pension Protection Fund. According to Companies House, Judge was also a director on a U.K.-registered company in which Yang has significant control, B&H Enterprises. She served from 2017 to February 2020, when she resigned. She died in August 2020.
These disclosures raise serious questions over how much potentially sensitive access and information Yang became privy to and how much senior U.K. officials scrutinized these issues in the past and today.
Yang is not an isolated case, said Yu, the United Front scholar, but part of a “a broader, deeply entrenched network meticulously cultivated by the [Chinese Communist] Party over the years. The network the Party has established operates on a much larger scale. It is influencing democratic societies in all aspects and needs immediate attention.”
RFA staff contributed to reporting.