Laura Murphy is a professor of human rights and contemporary slavery at Sheffield Hallam University. She investigates how the Chinese government exploits the country’s Uyghur community to mine rare minerals and make consumer goods for the west, something the Chinese state denies.
Murphy describes to Helen Pidd how in 2024, strange things began to happen. “I started receiving emails – journalists, other researchers, and companies who relied on our research to help them do due diligence, were writing to me and calling and saying: hey, I noticed that your reports are down.”
Murphy outlines to Pidd the process by which her research was cancelled and her reports hidden away, and how Sheffield Hallam explained those decisions at the time. She describes the means by which the Chinese government was putting pressure on the university and the impact of her work.
The Guardian’s senior China correspondent, Amy Hawkins, then explains how the UK universities sector became so entangled with China and its students, the extent to which the sector is dependent on this relationship, and what all of this says about the importance the Chinese state places on its international reputation.
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