UK’s elite universities now have more Chinese than British students enrolled in advanced technology courses

New data shows Chinese students outnumber British students enrolled in advanced engineering and technology courses at Britain’s elite universities.

There are as many Chinese students doing masters degrees in science and mathematics at the UK’s top five research centers as there are British students.

Talented students should be encouraged to stay in the UK after their studies to prevent their talents falling into the hands of the Chinese regime, campaigners and politicians said last night.

Sam Dunning, of the UK-China Transparency think tank, said Britain’s long-winded planning processes, expensive public services and high taxes meant postgraduate researchers could set up labs or businesses in China more quickly and at less cost.

‘The risks are high,’ he said. ‘Technology is the determining force of the modern age and we are training the next generation of senior engineers.

‘Our universities and government are not doing enough to prevent sensitive research and technical information from being transferred to the Chinese military or to companies in China rather than here.

‘These are hugely talented people who could build Britain’s next big AI or biotech firm if we provided a more competitive environment.

‘It is not in the public interest for any of them to go and work for the Chinese military, potentially leading to Russian aggression or any other threat to us or our allies.’

Oxford is one of the UK’s best centers of learning for science, technology, engineering and mathematics

Data compiled by the Higher Education Statistics Agency showed the distribution of students studying postgraduate engineering and technology at the UK’s top five universities for these subjects – Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial, Manchester and University College London (UCL).

In total, 3,160 Chinese students enrolled, while only 2,260 British students enrolled.

Meanwhile, 6,295 Chinese students, not far from 8,155 British students, were studying science, mathematics and biotechnology at the top five centers for these subjects (Cambridge, Oxford, Imperial, UCL and Edinburgh).

Shadow national security and protection secretary Alicia Kearns said: ‘British universities are dependent on Chinese funding and blindly unaware of the risks.

‘This dependence has undermined academic freedom on campus and exposed cutting-edge research to state-directed technology and intellectual property theft.

‘It should be a wake-up call that there are now more Chinese than British students studying engineering at our major universities.

‘We need a renewed push to attract our own young people into STEM so that the UK can develop the technological advantage needed to protect our national security.’

Luke de Pulford, director general of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, said a science student in Edinburgh was recently persuaded to work on a state-run genomics program in Beijing after being groomed by a Chinese United Front organization masquerading as a ‘talent programme’.

‘The UK has been deliberately naive about the intentions of some Chinese students and talent acquisition centers that are United Front projects,’ he said.

‘They want to bring students of Chinese origin who are doing sensitive research projects back to China to work in state-owned enterprises.

‘China’s absence from the advanced tier of the foreign influence registration scheme means that the police and intelligence security services have no tools to address this problem, so they can roam free to do whatever they want.’

Last year Sir Paul Nurse, president of the Royal Society, warned that China was investing heavily in science and technology while British researchers faced tight budgets.

‘If you go now to visit the growing science cities [in China]”They are incredibly impressive,” he said. ‘When I visit our universities and look at the infrastructure we have, it looks more and more third world to me compared to this.’