A think tank co-founded by Lord O’Neill, a prominent economic adviser known for popularizing the term BRIC, has come under scrutiny due to one of its co-founders’ past ties with Chinese state media. The Brics Plus Thinking platform was launched on July 6, shortly before Andy Burnham assumed office as Prime Minister. Lord O’Neill established the organization together with Gemma Cheng’er Deng, a former senior director at Xinhua News Agency, China’s official state news outlet.
Deng held several senior positions at Xinhua over a seven-year period, roles typically reserved for members of the Chinese Communist Party. However, prior public references to her tenure at Xinhua were removed from the internet ahead of the think tank’s launch, a review of archived web material shows. Attempts to verify Ms. Deng’s Chinese name were unsuccessful.
Critics have raised concerns about the implications of these undisclosed or obscured connections. Sam Dunning, director of UK-China Transparency, a research organization focused on Chinese influence abroad, said the concealment undermines trust and prompts questions about underlying motives. “The fact of the work itself plainly indicates someone who passed muster as far as the Chinese Communist Party was concerned, profiting personally and perhaps making high-level official connections through a career contributing to state propaganda,” Dunning stated.
The issue of Beijing’s influence in Western political and elite circles has been a growing focus for intelligence agencies. Tim Law, a former UK defense attaché in Beijing, emphasized the risks posed by potential manipulation or covert influence campaigns orchestrated by entities like China’s United Front Work Department. This state body is known for coordinating efforts to align foreign individuals and institutions with the Chinese Communist Party’s strategic objectives through intelligence gathering and influence operations.
Neither Lord O’Neill nor Ms. Deng have been publicly linked to United Front activities. Together, they have promoted the new think tank as a platform intended to shape Western policymaking toward non-Western countries, particularly China and India. According to Ms. Deng, she had previously disclosed her employment at Xinhua and did not intend to hide her association. She explained that she removed the information from her LinkedIn profile while enrolled in a PhD program at King’s College London to obscure her age, asserting that her experience at Xinhua has informed her academic research as a China scholar.
The Brics Plus Thinking initiative aims to advocate for closer ties between Europe and China and advance the concept of a “multipolar world,” reflecting Beijing’s preferred international order, according to public statements by the co-founders. The development has sparked debate amid ongoing concerns about the transparency and influence of individuals with past roles in Chinese state media in shaping Western policy discourse.