UK-China Transparency (UKCT) was formally launched this week (see Notes, 16 September). Its aim is in its name. There is sadly little transparency about UK-China dealings, especially in our universities. I first reported this problem early in 2020 when I investigated the behaviour of Jesus College, Cambridge, and its China Centre, run by the CCP apologist Professor Peter Nolan. It is probably not a coincidence that the three founders of UKCT – Sir Bernard Silverman, Martin Village and the young freelance reporter Sam Dunning – are all Jesus alumni. The more they looked, the more uncomfortable they became about their college’s advancement of CCP networking and propaganda and its role as the ramp for the courting of the Chinese regime by the whole of Cambridge University. To coincide with the launch, UKCT has published its investigation of Cambridge’s extensive research links with Huawei, which are cumulatively worth £28 million since 2016. These actually increased after the government opted in 2020 to ban Huawei from core parts of the 5G network. (New engagements are now paused; earlier ones persist.) The work includes sensitive areas with surveillance applications like face and speech recognition. In one case, research papers have been co-written with Huawei and scientists linked to China’s military. Where Cambridge has been compelled to disgorge records, it has sometimes redacted details about the nature of the research.

At the launch, there was discussion of how, under Xi Jinping, the general situation continues to worsen. One theory is that the various property company collapses in China this year serve his turn because they weaken his rivals, including the late Deng Xiaoping’s family. He may believe it is better for China to let foreign investment fall and create a siege economy. This approach has been christened ‘West Korea’.

There has been much comment about the Metropolitan Police experts on hand with reassurance that alarming words like ‘jihad’ can have peaceful meanings. Context is the key to meaning. Imagine you are sitting in, say, a gay bar or a synagogue and a young man rushes in and yells: ‘Allahu Akbar!’ You may know these words simply mean ‘God is great!’ You may well agree. Nevertheless, you will hurl yourself to the ground as fast as you can.

Last week, I spoke at a reception in parliament to mark the publication of Rural Wrongs by Charlie Pye-Smith. The author has travelled all over Britain to investigate the fate of the former quarry species (fox, deer, hare) nearly 20 years after the hunting ban. The story is of far more killing, particularly of foxes. Whereas hunting sought to keep fox populations in balance, observing seasons and eliminating weaker specimens, the shoots which dominate the land formerly hunted tend to exterminate indiscriminately, without regard to welfare. A fuss is made about culling badgers, but few care about the fate of the foxes the ban was supposed to save.

Clare Bellamy, huntsman/Master of the Lauderdale, gave a moving account of the Scottish situation. The SNP has just replaced the previous semi-ban which allowed full packs to flush foxes on to guns with a ban on trail-hunting, a ban on using more than two hounds and an onerous licensing system which, by publicising who has licences, invites retribution by antis. Strict liability (having to prove you’re innocent) and vicarious liability create a nightmare for landowners. Scottish packs bred over generations will disappear.

The subtitle of Pye-Smith’s book is ‘the Unintended Consequences of Bad Law’, a subject which, nowadays, could make many books. One characteristic of bad law is that legislation is often the expression of a pressure group’s moralistic opinion, rather than something which makes sense as law. The left loves such interference, but the grim fact is that it has been as bad under the Conservatives. The hunting ban is the classic example under Labour, but there are many under the Tories – the Hunting Trophies (import prohibition) Bill, the Animal Sentience Bill, large parts of the Online Safety Bill, the proposed ban on ‘conversion therapy’, ‘hate speech’ laws which stretch the concept of ‘harm’ to crush free speech, and so on to the crack of doom. If Sir Keir Starmer wants to pursue the logic of his new conciliatory approach to non-natural Labour voters such as most rural ones, he should shut down his party’s cultural lawfare, such as a trail-hunting ban, and attack the ways in which the Tories have proved hostile to country life.

In an interview on Saturday, Hilary , the director-general of the National Trust, declared, as if neutral: ‘I don’t want to be part of that [culture] war.’ She may well not seek such a role, but it was under her that the ‘slavery and colonialism’ report on NT properties was produced and the Colonial Countryside Project invited schoolchildren to visit NT houses and write poems deriding their former owners. Restore Trust, the group which wants the NT to return to its founding aims, exists precisely because it dislikes culture-war entryism. It would melt away if the NT management were doing its job. On the day before Ms McGrady’s interview appeared, the young director of Restore Trust, Zewditu Gebreyohanes, was informed by the NT that there would be no room for her at the AGM on 11 November. She will have to intervene by Zoom. Since, at last year’s meeting, Zewditu was the star critic from the floor, one may suspect the NT is not neutral about who can attend its meeting in person.

A friend sends me a photograph of his local shop in north London. It is called Highgate News and its awning advertises the Guardian. In the window, however, is a notice which says: ‘We do not sell newspapers.’ The newsagent says they cost too much from the wholesaler to be worth his while.