MI5 today warned universities about an organisation named CGTRI that is linked to the Chinese intelligence services. CGTRI has been funding and using the work of UK researchers.
The announcement marks an escalation in the discussion about research security, urging universities to do better. In it, MI5 warn universities that individuals risk breaking the law if they do not fulfil their obligations.
It comes as the higher education sector endures continuing, intense financial pressure and deepening dependencies on Chinese student fees; and as the number of Chinese nationals studying STEM at a postgraduate level in elite British universities continues to grow both absolutely and as a proportion of the whole student body.
UKCT has established that CGTRI, the organisation named by MI5, has identifiable staffing overlaps with China’s University of International Relations, widely known to be uniquely closely affiliated with China’s Ministry of State Security.
UKCT has also established that CGTRI specialises in cybersecurity, signals intelligence and a variety of AI-enabled tools for strategic national objectives.
These specialties include capabilities especially useful for conducting cyber-attacks of the kind that Chinese government agencies, including the MSS, have executed against UK targets including companies, universities, and public services and infrastructure.
UKCT’s initial research into grants associated with CGTRI yields a list of British universities which should assess their past and potentially ongoing links to it with special urgency. (Full list below)
UKCT is also publishing grant codes we assess are linked to CGTRI, in order to help universities address the situation. (Full list below)
The announcement
MI5 today issued an unusually direct public “Espionage Alert” concerning Chinese intelligence activity in British universities. It says the Beijing-based China General Technology Research Institute (CGTRI, 中国通用技术研究院) — also translated as the China Academy of General Technology (CAGT) — has “very strong ties” to China’s civilian intelligence service, the Ministry of State Security (MSS).
MI5 says it has identified CGTRI’s primary purpose as funding academic research that directly improves the MSS’s technical capabilities for espionage. “More than 100 UK-linked academics”, according to MI5, have contributed to CGTRI-funded projects, including work on artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, covert communications systems and steganography. “In some cases,” MI5 stated, “academics may not be aware that CGTRI is funding the Chinese research project they are contributing to.”
--> Read Reuters’ report on the MI5 alert
--> Read the alert itself on MI5’s website
In tandem, Security Minister Dan Jarvis has reportedly written to every British university vice-chancellor asking them to support staff in ending all arrangements with CGTRI.
Crucially, MI5 also warns of potential criminal consequences under the National Security Act 2023: especially now that the intelligence connection has been publicly identified, researchers or institutions continuing relevant relationships may need to consider offences concerning materially assisting a foreign intelligence service or receiving a material benefit from one.
The context
Considered in the context of growing concerns about research security in the past 7-8 years, the alert marks a major escalation: MI5 has considerably upped the pressure on universities. UKCT has previously traced the growing bureaucratic and academic resources being directed into research security. On occasion, universities have asked for greater technical and financial support for research security from the government.
The request for financial support brings to mind a key context, namely, that universities are extraordinarily dependent on Chinese student fees, to the extent that many would become insolvent if income from these fees were lost and not replaced. Many institutions are already making sweeping cuts in a sector that is increasingly fragile financially. The situation represents a ‘ticking time bomb’ with ramifications for British science, prosperity, and national security, but it has been mostly ignored by British politicians.
Another context is also key: as explained by UKCT research previously, Chinese nationals now outnumber British nationals in STEM subjects at postgraduate level in elite universities. UKCT aims to publish an update showing that the latest official figures demonstrate that this trend continues, and the integration between British and Chinese universities at a human level continues to deepen.
CGTRI – a secret front, or an obvious risk?
CGTRI does not operate entirely in secret, but semi-publicly, albeit sometimes in a semi-obfuscated way. Working out who knew what amongst those who interacted or collaborated with CGTRI is not possible from open-source research, however. This point was underlined by MI5 when it referred to academics unwittingly assisting Chinese intelligence.
On the other hand, the online information obtained by UKCT is clear: public information strongly suggested that this organisation was closely associated with China’s intelligence apparatus.
For example, CGTRI quite clearly focused on intelligence and security related technologies, including encryption, speaker recognition, network security, hacking tool development, underwater acoustic localisation, and steganography. Published Chinese-language guidance, easily retrievable from 2015 onwards, for those applying for CGTRI-related grants underlined priority areas such as these explicitly. More information about this guidance, which was found online by UKCT, is included below.
Guo Yunbiao 郭云彪, identified in 2020 as CGTRI’s Director, is publicly identifiable as a senior scientist working on major Chinese government national security projects, and affiliated with Beijing’s University of International Relations, widely described as subordinate to the Ministry of State Security.
CGTRI maintained a joint fund with the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC). This is China’s principal public funder of STEM research. UKCT’s analysis of published academic research papers suggests that this fund has been referred to by means of a variety of English names, including:
NSFC-Tongyong Union Foundation
General Technology Collaborative Fund for Basic Research
General Technology Joint Fund for Basic Research
Whilst it is considered best practice amongst academics to acknowledge all the funders of the research behind a published paper, this practice is not always followed, and there are various conventions associated with acknowledgement. Some academics might refer to a fund without citing a specific grant code. In other cases, the code alone might be used. Clearly, the translation of fund names presents another issue when it comes to collating all the work funded by a particular entity.
An added complication is that NSFC has funded tens of thousands of papers in the UK in recent years. UKCT’s research suggests that some grants linked to both NSFC and CGTRI (via the joint fund) are in some cases only described as being connected to NSFC, without mention of CGTRI.
These nuances mean that it is unlikely to be easy, and may perhaps be impossible, to identify all the work linked to the UK that has been funded by CGTRI. It is certainly even harder to establish how much academics who received funding from CGTRI knew about their funder, or even if they knew they were funded by CGTRI.
CGTRI’s official guidance
The CGTRI-NSFC joint fund was publicly announced in 2015, as can be seen from an archived page found by UKCT. This page explicitly lists the following areas as the fund’s main priorities:
mobile communications security
post-quantum public-key cryptography
coverless information hiding
information hiding in natural images, including modelling, implementation and security evaluation
multimedia perception/search/recognition/analysis in network big-data environments
vertical search and data-analysis technologies
high-performance multimedia sensors
mobile-internet security mechanisms and countermeasure technologies
Secondary priority areas were, at the fund’s launch, similarly but not exclusively focused on cybersecurity, cryptography, signals intelligence, etc. Other topics added to the specifications guidance the next year included:
Text/image recognition for various languages, including Tibetan, Uyghur and English
Lip-based identity recognition
Big-data target localisation and tracking
Target-behaviour analysis using external data
Identification, transcription and translation of specified signals/media
International-event modelling and risk warning
Anonymous-communications detection
Backbone/core-network vulnerability analysis
Chip information-leakage and vulnerability analysis
Mobile-internet user-behaviour analysis
Electronic forensics and anti-forensics
In 2026, the priorities were as follows:
Cryptocurrency transaction graph analysis via natural-language interaction
Financial-security knowledge graphs and major-event early warning
AI-based network-device security monitoring
AI security for specialised/private networks
LLM-based password generation and guessing
Broadband acoustic isolation and speech-information loss
Passive localisation using underwater acoustic signals
AI-agent sensitive-information leakage and auditing
Multi-agent simulation of complex interactive systems
Southeast Asian multilingual/multimodal event-analysis LLMs
AI-agent security evaluation and protection
Chip security evaluation and protection
AI security testing across operating-system architectures
Neurological-abnormality analysis from physiological speech parameters
Signal-protocol asynchronous group-key agreement
Steganography using new audio/video representation and reconstruction
Assessment of latent higher-order cognitive abilities
Non-line-of-sight solar-blind UV communications
Long-range sensing of subsurface physiological information
UKCT has identified guidance for the funds linked to CGTRI from 2015, 2016, 2023 and 2026, enabling an analysis of CGTRI’s rules and regulations as well as its priority research areas. Such guidance elucidates possible control mechanisms connected to the funding referred to by MI5, and is also pertinent to the question of ‘who knew what?’ UKCT’s initial findings are that:
CGTRI was directly involved in selecting and evaluating projects
The involvement of CGTRI staff was mandated from the start
Applicants had to speak to CGTRI’s office before applying to understand the requirements and context
Project outputs were supplied to CGTRI
Again, this is not to imply UK-based authors of papers connected to CGTRI funding themselves had any contact with CGTRI. China-based co-authors appear to be part of the typical pattern in the papers UKCT has identified. On the other hand, CGTRI was quite clearly linked to Chinese intelligence.
The CGTRI network in the UK
UKCT has mapped a network of researchers, institutions and grants that appear to be linked to CGTRI. UKCT’s initial scoping suggests that the universities which should assess their past and potentially ongoing links to CGTRI with special urgency include, in no particular order:
University College London
The University of Surrey
Birkbeck College, University of London
Queen Mary University of London
The University of Warwick
The University of Leicester
The University of Hull
The University of Southampton
The University of Strathclyde
The University of Lincoln
The University of Sheffield
The University of Cambridge
The University of Manchester
The University of Middlesex
The University of Exeter.
UKCT would be happy to share the results of its initial scoping with these universities upon request. In addition, UKCT assesses that the following grant codes are certainly or likely (depending on the specific code) to be connected to CGTRI. This list is unlikely to be exhaustive:
U1536121
U1536122
U1636116
U1636125
U1636202
U1636209
U1636218
U1736106
U1736113
U1736121
U1836201
U1836214
U1836218
U1936105
U1936204
U1936220
The presence of one of these grant identifiers in a publication does not establish that a UK co-author received CGTRI funding, let alone knew that CGTRI was involved, or had any relationship with Chinese intelligence. It is an indicator that we are publishing to assist institutional review.
If you would like to know more about our work, please contact info@ukctransparency.org