The warmth of summer tried its best to make one last stand in Oxford on Sunday afternoon as I ambled through the gates of the War Memorial Gardens of Christ Church College.
“My sword I give to him that shall succeed me in my pilgrimage,” read the inscription on the ground from John Bunyan’s ancient Christian allegory, The Pilgrim’s Progress. Never mind the sword – I’d settle for a Mr Freeze ice pop, I said to myself, as I felt a bead of sweat run down my temple.
I had to Google the profound words inscribed beneath my feet to find their provenance. I vaguely remembered hearing them before, but it was far from 350-year-old devotional literature that I was raised. There’s nothing like a Sunday stroll around Oxford, a city steeped in intellectual lore, to remind you that you’re nowhere near as smart as you would like to be.
One thing I knew was that Christ Church was always worth a visit on a sunny day.
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For the famous University of Oxford, 95km West of London, the city is its campus. The institution is not centralised around one location. Rather, it is spread across town in 44 separate colleges and private halls – a federation of fonts of wisdom.
Some, like Pembroke College, where I had just been to the annual conference of the British Irish Association, are effortlessly easy on the eye. But beyond its gates and behind its walls, Christ Church is the prettiest of them all. At the least, it’s a toss up between it and Magdalen College.
I followed the crowd towards the tranquil meadow south of Christ Church, still panting like a dog. I stopped for a second along the way and realised that almost everybody around me was Chinese. What I presumed was Mandarin filled the air.
Everybody else suddenly stopped too. People’s mobile phones were all making weird siren noises. Warning notifications started appearing on screens. Chinese tourists began looking at each other in alarm and confusion.
[ An Irishman at Oxford: It was an education in being an outsiderOpens in new window ]
It was just the UK government with a scheduled 3pm test of its emergency alerts system for weather disasters. I heard English voices reassuring the Chinese not to worry. You’re safe. At least for now.
Oxfordshire is China’s favourite piece of Britain. Close to half a million Chinese tourists come to Britain each year and it is estimated that nearly three quarters of them visit Bicester Village, a luxury outlets retail centre a short drive from Oxford. Its Chinese advertising is the stuff of marketing legend. Only Buckingham Palace attracts more Chinese visitors.
But Oxfordshire has yet more delights. Locals in the nondescript village of Kidlington, seven miles from Oxford, were confused a few years back when busloads of Chinese tourists began showing up to take photos in the gardens of their ordinary homes. It emerged Chinese tour guides had picked the town as the perfect example of how the English really lived – houses are different in China.
Then there is the allure of the University of Oxford. China vies with the US for top spot in the rankings of where Oxford draws most international students. But perhaps not for long.
MI5 warned British universities last year they were being targeted by foreign states. They didn’t specifically mention China but everybody knew that’s what they meant. In a report in August of this year, the UK-China Transparency think tank came straight out and said it: beware of Chinese students spying on their classmates.
The Chinese embassy dismissed this as “groundless and absurd” and said the think tank was trying to “undermine the normal exchanges between the Chinese and British peoples”.
But it isn’t just China-sceptical research groups that have expressed similar worries.
[ China warns Britain against meddling in TaiwanOpens in new window ]
Until last year Chris Patten was chancellor of the University of Oxford. Just before he quit he sounded the alarm over alleged Chinese threats to free speech on British campuses, such as lobbying over teaching about Taiwan. He also warned the UK government it would be “delusional” not to toughen its stance on China. Yet during his time, Oxford University accepted up to £99 million (€114 million) in donations from Chinese sources since 2017, according to the college newspaper, the Cherwell.
Patten has a little bit of history with the Sino state. He has called Xi Jinping a dictator. He was also the final British governor of Hong Kong, where he advised China to carry on with British-style democracy. Chinese media famously dismissed him as a “prostitute for a thousand generations”.
There was a contest last year to replace Patten as chancellor. The final match-up was between former Labour minister Peter Mandelson, who has had many close business associations with China over the years, and former Tory foreign secretary William Hague, who was relatively pragmatic towards China when he was in David Cameron’s government.
Hague got the job. He told a Politico podcast that Oxford admissions officers should vet Chinese applicants for threats to UK national security. They won’t like that in Beijing.
