The alleged Chinese spy linked to Prince Andrew has been publicly named as Tengbo Yang after a judge lifted an anonymity order, raising fresh questions about his connections to the British establishment.
The 50-year-old Chinese national has been banned from entering Britain on national security grounds since March 2023. MI5 has alleged that Yang — who advised UK companies spanning GSK and McLaren — worked for a group gathering intelligence on behalf of the Chinese state.
Yang had challenged the ban from the Home Office, an appeal that was rejected last week by the Special Immigration Appeals Commission, and on Monday he hit out at his treatment.
“The widespread description of me as a ‘spy’ is entirely untrue,” he said. “The political climate has changed and unfortunately I have fallen victim to this. When relations are good and Chinese investment is sought, I am welcome in the UK. When relations sour, an anti-China stance is taken, and I am excluded.”
Yang’s case has reignited debate about the extent to which the UK government should be reviving relations with Beijing. His activities have also highlighted the fine line between the legitimate activities of consultants, and what MI5 director-general Ken McCallum has referred to in relation to China as “interference activity — influencing that is clandestine, coercive or corruptive.”
Yang had developed business links to Prince Andrew and access to a network of other senior British political and business figures, primarily through his company Hampton Group International, which said it focused on “investing in, consulting on and enabling opportunities between China, the UK and the rest of the world”.
The commission’s ruling found that Yang “had been in a position to generate relationships with prominent UK figures and senior Chinese officials that could be leveraged for political interference purposes by the CCP [Chinese Communist party] . . . or the Chinese State”.
MI5 had alleged Yang was a member of the Chinese Communist party working for the United Front Work Department, which gathers intelligence.
The judges found there was “not an abundance of evidence of the UFWD links” but there was an inconsistency between some of the evidence and Yang’s “claims that he had no connections to anyone in politics in China”.
Yang previously worked with UK drugmaker GSK to manage the fallout of a bribery scandal in China, according to people familiar with the matter.
GSK did not comment.
The pharmaceuticals group was introduced to Yang by Sir Ron Dennis, the former chief executive of McLaren, one of the people said. Dennis declined to comment. McLaren did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Gordonstoun, the Scottish boarding school attended by Prince Andrew and King Charles, said on Monday that it had terminated an agreement with Yang’s company Hampton Group International.
Hampton Group International signed an agreement in 2019 with Gordonstoun to establish sister campuses in China. The school said that “for legal reasons” it was “unable to provide further details at this time”.
As well as his links to the royal family, Yang met and was photographed with former Conservative prime ministers Lord David Cameron and Baroness Theresa May. It was unclear when the encounters occurred and there is no suggestion either politician knew Yang personally.
Downing Street declined to comment on Monday whether Sir Keir Starmer had ever met Yang.
The anonymity order was reviewed during a hearing at the Royal Courts of Justice on Monday, ahead of MPs threatening to use parliamentary privilege to name Yang in the House of Commons.
Sir Lindsay Hoyle, the Commons Speaker, granted an urgent question on Monday tabled by Sir Iain Duncan Smith, a leading Tory China hawk, who warned that Yang was “not a lone wolf”.
Dan Jarvis, UK security minister, welcomed the court’s decision to uphold the ban on Yang entering the country and warned that “this case does not exist in a vacuum”.
He told MPs that Britain faces “ongoing efforts by a number of states, including China, Russia and Iran, to harm the UK’s security” and said the government’s response was “among the most robust and sophisticated anywhere in the world”.
Jarvis said the Home Office was “working hard” on rolling out a new foreign influence registration scheme — loosely modelled on the US Foreign Agents Registration Act — to start next summer.
The case against Yang was premised in part on data unearthed from his phone seized by the UK security services in November 2021.
One document titled “talking points for the duke” from August 2021 suggested Prince Andrew was in a “desperate situation and will grab on to anything”.
However, Peter Humphrey, external research associate of Harvard University’s Fairbank Centre for China studies, said Prince Andrew’s role in the saga was something of a distraction.
“What we should really be worried about is the members of the political elite in parliament who have been involved with this man.”
Once referred to as China’s “magic weapon”, the UFWD which Yang was allegedly linked to, aims to win support for China’s political agenda, build overseas influence and gather information.
It concentrates on influencing overseas politicians and the Chinese diaspora and infiltrating Chinese students at international universities.
Its highest body is the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, an advisory body that meets annually. As late as March 2022, the China Daily state media outlet interviewed Yang describing him as an overseas delegate to the CPPCC.
He told the newspaper he had “actively participated” in President Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road Initiative, the infrastructure-building programme seen as spearheading China’s global economic influence, particularly in developing countries.
“China-UK co-operation in third-party markets is showing new characteristics of . . . promoting harmonious regional development,” he said, echoing Communist party propaganda. “We will link China’s kinetic energy to Britain’s potential energy.”
Responding to questions about Yang at a press briefing in Beijing, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Lin Jian said: “China’s actions have been above board and there is no such thing as deceitful actions or interference.”
