Dear Flo,

I am writing to acknowledge your request under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 received by The University of Manchester yesterday, our reference as per the subject line.

The University will respond to your request within 20 working days.

Kind regards,

Polly

My usual working days are Wednesday morning, Thursday and Friday.  I job-share with Paula Egerton who usually works Monday, Tuesday and Thursday morning. 

Polly Smith | Information Officer | Information Governance Office | Directorate of Compliance and Risk | Professional Services | G.004 | Christie Building | The University of Manchester | Oxford Road | Manchester | M13 9PL | 0161 200 8799| www.manchester.ac.uk. Please contact me on Teams or email as I may not be working in the office to take your call.

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Dear Flo and Jessica,

We write with regard to your recent requests to The University of
Manchester that were allotted our reference numbers FOI 023-130, 131, 132,
and 133.

We are aware that you both work for the Index on Censorship. The Freedom
of Information Act 2000, under Section 12 (4) (b), allows that where two
or more requests are received by different persons who appear to the
public authority to be acting in concert or in pursuit of a campaign,
those requests may be considered together for the purposes of costs. We
believe that is the case here and therefore we are considering all four
requests together in accordance with S12 (4) (b).

Your full request therefore is as follows:

023-130

 1. Could you confirm whether your university has any formal guidelines
for ensuring the safety of students from surveillance or coercion from
those acting on behalf of foreign governments (for example, safety
from surveillance, blackmail, forced pledges of loyalty and being
reported on by fellow students)? If so, please provide access to this
document.

We are especially interested in two particular examples of transnational
repression of Chinese students that have been reported on in the media:

 2. Has your organisation evaluated the possible risk posed by Chinese
Student and Scholar Associations given evidence that they have
surveilled other students, organised counter protestors and acted upon
orders from the Chinese Embassy?

Examples:

[1]https://www.hrw.org/report/2021/06/30/th...

[2]https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019...

 3. Are you aware of how many international students are receiving funding
from the Chinese Scholarship Council stream? The CSC is part of the
Chinese education ministry and organises foreign exchange programmes
and international studies for Chinese students. 

 

 4. Have you investigated the possible risk posed to students involved
with this programme given recent evidence that agreements students
sign include pledges of loyalty to the party state and threaten
students’ parents with debt if they fail to complete their studies?

Details:
[3]https://thepienews.com/news/chinese-stud...

 5. Has your institution ever had to deal with a case where a student was
put at risk of transnational repression and can you provide details of
how your institution dealt with this situation? Feel free to keep the
identity of the student anonymous. 

 

023-131

 6. Could you confirm whether your university has an academic freedom code
of conduct, guideline or another formal agreement? If so, please
provide access to this document.

 

 7. Could you please confirm whether the university management conducts
risk assessments for academic freedom prior to entering into
institutional relationships with higher education institutions in
authoritarian states? If so, please provide access to this document.

 

 8. Could you please outline the process for beginning new, or
re-evaluating current, institutional partnerships with or receiving
funding from higher education institutions or state-linked
organisations (particularly those in authoritarian countries such as
China)?

 

023-132

 9. Could you please provide the details of formal relationships your
university has with Chinese and Hong Kong institutions. These include
any relationships that were established with a formal agreement (such
as Joint Venture Universities, Programs or Initiatives). Please
provide the contracts if possible. If not possible, then please
provide an overview of these agreements including departments and
academics involved and the focus of their research.

 

This also includes relationships that do not generate profit via direct
monetary exchanges between universities, and instead may focus on skill
and research cooperation or exchange (e.g. memorandums of understanding).

10. Please specify the name of the institution with which you have a
connection and details of the agreement. If relevant, please specify
any profit generated for your organisation (larger than £,5000).

 

023-133

11. Could you please provide the details of accepted donations, gifts,
grants and research funding (worth over £5,000) to your University
from Chinese and Hong Kong entities.

For each donation/gift/funding, I would like to know the following
information:

- Specify the country

- Specify the name of the individual or the ultimate beneficial owner of
the corporation/charity/trust/foundation/organisation

- The date your institution accepted the money

- The total sum (breakdown if applicable) and description of the accepted
money

- A description of the purpose of the donation and what it will be used
for. E.g. the department or project benefiting from the funding.

12. Alongside this, please provide the total percentage of income provided
by Chinese and Hong Kong entities. Please provide one percentage
including Chinese and Hong Kong international student fees, and
another excluding such.

 

Please provide this information for the financial years of 2020-2021,
2021-2022 and information available for the current year (2022-2023).

Defining Chinese and Hong Kong entities:

*For individuals this includes those with citizenship in either country.

*For corporations/companies with a HQ and/or has been founded in either
country.

*For charities/trusts/foundations please include a) grant-giving trusts
registered in China/Hong Kong b) grant-giving government affiliated bodies
registered in China/Hong Kong.

*Any other organisation from each country to consider to be relevant, e.g.
including education-based organisations.

 

The University has now considered your request and I write to advise you
that unfortunately we cannot provide the information you are seeking at
this time. This is because we believe that the request exceeds the 18 hour
‘Appropriate Limit’ (as defined in the Freedom of Information and Data
Protection (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004) and as a result,
Section 12 (1) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA) applies. I
have explained the reasons for this in our refusal notice below.

 

Refusal Notice

This refusal notice is issued in accordance with Section 17 (5) of the
FOIA which states that “A public authority which, in relation to any
request for information, is relying on a claim that Section 12 or 14
applies must, within the time for complying with Section 1(1), give the
applicant a notice stating that fact.”

 

To explain our position, we have sought advice from numerous relevant
staff across the departments that your request covers. They have advised
that particularly in relation to questions 9 through to 12 there are
difficulties in extracting relevant information.

In terms of all research agreements with Chinese and Hong Kong
institutions, this would take a significant amount of time to assess all
possible institutions captured by the request and then all of the research
associated to those institutions in order to identify and collate the
requested data.  NB We don’t make a profit on our research so we wouldn’t
hold data for the second part of question 10.

In terms of donations, gifts, grants and research funding from Chinese and
Hong Kong entities, this would take some time to establish. In terms of
research, please see the comments above. In terms of donations, we do not
hold data on nationality for a large number of alumni and supporter
records.  Thus we would base any return on individual and organisational
donors who to the best of our knowledge are based in the People’s Republic
of China, Hong Kong SAR, or Taiwan. Such data may not fully match the
provided criteria for “entities” as per your definitions.

In terms of income provided by Chinese and Hong Kong entities, we are able
to run a financial report and filter by country, but this is reliant on
that field being filled out correctly (and this will not necessarily
correlate to the definitions you have provided). To fully address your
question we would need to check each transaction to ensure the country
field was correctly filled out. Even if we assumed it had been filled out
correctly, there would still then be a significant manual process to
identify income types and ensure they met the terms of your request.

 

For all of the above reasons we are not able to extract relevant data to
provide an accurate or full response to your request within the 18 hour
‘Appropriate Limit’ and hence we are at this time refusing your request in
accordance with Section 12 (1) of the FOIA.

 

Section 16 of the FOIA imparts a duty on public authorities to provide
advice and assistance to requesters to help them bring their requests
below the ‘Appropriate Limit’. Accordingly I can advise that we should be
able to respond to questions 1 through to 8 but noting that we would need
you to provide clarification as to what you mean by the term
“transnational repression”.

In relation to questions 9 through to 12, if you discounted question 12
due to the significant complexities in extracting that data, and for the
remaining questions provided a named list of Chinese and Hong Kong
Institutions and organisations / companies that you are particularly
interested in for us to check against, this would greatly assist in
reducing the timescale of the work needed to comply with the request.
However do note that any such list would need to be of a concise and
manageable size. Additionally, if the timeframe was reduced to one year
rather than three, this would also greatly assist.

This advice is given in all good faith that we believe at this time that
we should be able to respond within the timescale if all the advice is
followed. However upon receiving a revised request, and then assessing it
in relation to extracting the data, it may still be that the cost limit
applies. Please do also note that if we did receive a revised request from
you any response may still be subject to exemptions if any are found to
apply once relevant data has been collated.

If you feel that The University of Manchester has refused access to
information to which you are entitled, or has not dealt with your request
appropriately under the FOIA, you have a right of appeal. 

 

An appeal in the first instance should be directed to the Information
Governance Office at [4][email address]. You should include:  

·         details of your initial request  

·         any other relevant information  

 

You must make this appeal within 40 working days from receipt of your
response. We will not accept appeals received after this date, as per the
Freedom of Information Code of Practice, Section 5.3. 

 

The University will deal with your appeal within a reasonable time, and
will inform you of the projected time scale on receipt of your complaint.
You are also welcome to contact the Information Governance Office with
informal questions about the handling of your request.  

 

After The University’s internal appeals procedure has been exhausted, you
have a further right of appeal to the Information Commissioner’s
Office. Details of this procedure can be found at [5]www.ico.org.uk. 

 

Kind regards

Sharon

 

Sharon Glen | Information Officer | Information Governance Office |
Directorate of Compliance and Risk |Professional Services | G7 Christie
Building | The University of Manchester | Oxford Road | Manchester | M13
9PL | [6]www.manchester.ac.uk

 

Please contact me via Teams or email as I may not be in the office to take
your call.

 

Have you refreshed your Data Protection & Cyber Security training? Details
of how staff can access the new course, are on the following IGO StaffNet
page: [7]https://www.staffnet.manchester.ac.uk/ig...

 

References

Visible links
1. https://www.hrw.org/report/2021/06/30/th...
2. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019...
3. https://thepienews.com/news/chinese-stud...
4. mailto:[email address]
5. http://www.ico.org.uk/
6. http://www.manchester.ac.uk/
7. https://www.staffnet.manchester.ac.uk/ig...