Tengbo Yang, a Chinese man who became a confidant of the UK's Prince Andrew, reportedly worked for a senior part of China's chain of affairs that Beijing calls "its magic weapon". But this week in London, that weapon backfired spectacularly.

While the United Front Work Department, where the UK intelligence agency MI5 has accused Yang of working, is officially considered by Beijing to be separate from its spy agencies, its overseas operations are aimed at winning influence for the public. . china By using various methods - some overt, some shadowy - to befriend senior figures and serve its cause, analysts say.

Yang, a 50-year-old Chinese national, has been banned from entering the UK on security grounds. The name was given publicly on Tuesday After a British judge lifted an anonymous order.

Separately on Tuesday, Christine Lee, a lawyer who was charged by MI5 "Political Intervention" In 2022, a legal challenge against the security services was lost. Lee made a large donation to Labor MP Barry Gardiner.

"Prince Andrew, Christine Lee and Barry Gardiner have done more in five days to push the issue of Chinese influence up the political agenda than MPs, the media and others have managed in five years," said Charles Parton, of the Council. a partner Geostrategy think-tank and a former UK diplomat in China.

“Useful fool? You bet,” Parton added.

Cases of alleged Chinese political influence touching the upper echelons of UK life have raised uncomfortable questions for Sir Keir Starmer's government, which Hope to strengthen relations with China To boost economic growth and address common issues like climate change.

China's embassy in London warned the UK on Tuesday that “Stop causing trouble", and hit out at MPs' "twisted mindset" on Yang's case, alleging that she developed business ties with Prince Andrew and access to a network of other senior British and business figures.

An embassy spokesman described the United Front as "beyond deterrence" and "an instrument of encouragement". . . friendship with other countries”, and accused UK MPs of “arrogance and shamelessness”.

The United Front has long been known to operate overseas in the UK, the US and other Western countries, but the organization has a diverse agenda and thousands of people on its payroll, according to analysts. In addition to influencing foreign figures and the Chinese diaspora, it also Runs a wide range of household operationsincluding the "sinicization" of oppressed ethnic minority groups in Tibet and Xinjiang.

The ultimate head of the organization is Wang Huning, Xi Jinping's chief ideologue and propagandist who is a member of the seven-member ruling Politburo Standing Committee, the top leadership body of the Chinese Communist Party.

Wang also heads the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, Beijing's advisory body, which meets annually with the country's rubber-stamp parliament. Analysts see the CPPCC as a supreme united front organization, bringing together important representatives of organizations and companies from within and outside the party.

“It is important to ensure that the entire leadership of the Communist Party of China . . . In all aspects and at every stage of the work of the United Front has been enhanced,” Wang Huning told a United Front work conference in southern China in January.

Yang was an overseas delegate of the CPPCC and featured in state media interviews, highlighting the importance of his work in the UK in Chinese propaganda.

While the United Front's central mission is to "unite all forces that can be united" under the will of the Communist Party and neutralize or weaken those that cannot be conquered, Beijing views the organization as separate from China's spy agencies. is, such as the Ministry of State Security. , whose operations China and abroad are largely secret.

In addition to the MSS, China's Ministry of Public Security and the military also conduct covert intelligence operations.

A sensitive area of ​​the United Front's operations abroad is the student. Accordingly research Last year by the Henry Jackson Society, a think-tank, there are more than 90 Chinese student and scholar associations in the UK, drawing membership from around 150,000 mainland Chinese students at British universities.

But the report argued that CSSAs are far from typical student societies. "The reality is that the CSSAs are branches of the central CSSAUK, which is overseen by Chinese diplomats in the UK, and is part of China's United Front Work system," it said.

Indeed, the report argued that CSSA had a real role in the UK and other countries. Challenging mainland Chinese students who hold dissenting views from Beijing's hardliners, particularly over tensions in Hong Kong and Xinjiang.

"In the UK, there are clear and concrete links with individuals and organisations [UFWD] have been involved in technology transfer efforts, community monitoring, political influence and propaganda,” said Sam Dunning, director of UK-China Transparency, a campaign group.

But the crude nature of the United Front creates room for denial while also casting suspicion on those with connections to the organization, no matter how tenuous those ties.

Several current and former Chinese students in the UK told the Financial Times that by no means all CSSA members were actively involved in the United Front. “Only a small minority of students seemed to be interested,” said one former student at a top UK university, adding that “it was very easy to escape the attention of CSSAs”.

This ambiguity in the actions of the United Front was also evident in some of the statements made by the UK Commission that decided Yang's case.

It found that Yang was "in a position to form relationships with prominent UK figures and senior Chinese officials that could be leveraged by the CCP for the purposes of political interference . . . or the Chinese state".

The judges further found that there was "not a preponderance of evidence of UFWD links", but noted some evidence and an "inconsistency in Yang's claims that he had no ties to anyone in politics in China".

In a statement this week, Yang did not directly refer to the United Front but insisted it had done "nothing wrong or illegal" and that the concerns raised by the Home Office were "founded".

"The widespread description of me as a 'spy' is completely false," he said.