SPONSOR schemes for Chinese students should be shut down amid spying fears, campaigners have said.
The China Scholarship Council has been accused of using scholars at top Scottish universities to intimidate fellow Chinese classmates.
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It offers students from the Far East country the opportunity to study for PhDs at top universities.
Campaigners also hit out at state-funded Confucius Institutes, which covers living costs.
There are branches at the universities of Edinburgh, Glasgow, Strathclyde, Heriot-Watt and Aberdeen.
Alyssa Fong, of the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation, who studied and worked at Edinburgh Uni, branded the China Scholarship Council a “significant risk” and called for it to be scrapped.
She also said that Confucius Institutes, state-sponsored organisations which promote Sino culture and language, should be closed down over their Chinese Communist Party (CCP) ties.
Alyssa told The Scottish Sun: “Anything the Chinese Communist Party can dual-use for their military purposes they will invest in. There are no Chinese students coming over on those scholarships to study literature.
“China’s using them to access Scottish higher education, take advantage of the incredible facilities and report that information back to China. It’s a significant risk.
“There’s a stipulation within this scholarship that says that students must return to China upon graduating.
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“I firmly believe that Confucius Institutes should also be shut down. There’s a lot of evidence that they are being used to surveil students, spread CCP propaganda and they are overseen by the Chinese Communist Party.”
The former neuroscience student fled Hong Kong in 2019 amid China’s crackdown on pro-democracy protests.
But despite travelling thousands of miles to Scotland, Alyssa still encountered CCP informants.
She said: “Course peers have asked me invasive questions about my political ideology and my family members’ locations. I was 21 at the time and didn’t understand how pervasive the CCP was.
“It follows you abroad. After disclosing my political ideology and my involvement with the pro-democracy movement, they told me that they were a CCP member.
“They said that they were required by law to report me for what I had said to them. It sounds Orwellian.”
Alyssa, who now lives and works in London, said Scotland is being exploited as a “playground to silence dissent” against the Chinese government.
She believes that there needs to be consequences for CCP members who harass staff and students.
The campaigner said: “Institutions across Scotland need to educate themselves. At this moment, members of the CCP are allowed to get away with what they do.
“Scotland is being used as their playground to silence dissent. It should never be the case in a western democracy.
“There shouldn’t be foreign agents working on their own agenda. Scotland stands for democracy, freedom of assembly, and freedom of speech.”
A spokesperson for Universities Scotland said: “Internationalisation brings significant rewards to both our universities and Scotland more widely, but it can also bring risk and that needs to be actively managed. Universities engage in all their international activities, teaching and research, with open eyes and due diligence, including the management of international scholarship programmes, ensuring that actions are consistent with academic freedom and institutional autonomy.
“There is no place for any form of harassment of students or staff within our universities. We’d encourage anyone feeling harassed or intimidated to seek support from their institution.”
We previously told how experts warned about Chinese gangs exploiting students from the country who are studying in Scotland to launder millions of pounds through property and other illicit investments.
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Mark Sabah, of The Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation, said: “Powerful forces in China have inserted themselves into every aspect of life here.”
The Confucius Institute and China Scholarship Council were contacted for comment.