LONDON — Following days of speculation, Chinese businessperson Yang Tengbo has outed himself as the alleged spy at the center of a scandal gripping the U.K. establishment.
The 50-year-old came clean after reports emerged at the weekend that he had been banned from entering the U.K. in 2023, when he was accused of engaging in “covert and deceptive activity” on behalf of the Chinese state. He was assessed at the time as posing a “threat to U.K. national security.”
In the years before his entry was curtailed, Yang had enjoyed high access to prominent figures in the British establishment, including members of the royal family and the most senior politicians and business leaders.
A court order was lifted Monday after speculation swirled online about the identity of the alleged spy, known only as “H6,” and with MPs threatening to use the ancient right of parliamentary privilege, which protects them from prosecution, to name him in parliament.
The scandal first erupted Saturday, when it emerged Yang had enjoyed a close friendship with King Charles III’s brother, Prince Andrew, who is already a figure of disgrace in the U.K. over his close ties to the late American pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.
Yang was also reported to have met former prime ministers David Cameron and Theresa May during close to two decades living and working in Britain, before being barred by an immigration tribunal on security grounds, a ruling he had challenged.
In a statement Monday, Yang said he was no longer seeking to remain anonymous and had done “nothing wrong or unlawful.” He added: “The widespread description of me as a ‘spy’ is entirely untrue.
“I built my private life in the U.K. over two decades and love the country as my second home. I would never do anything to harm the interests of the U.K.”
An explosive dossier
Details of Yang’s friendship with Andrew were revealed in an explosive court dossier.
The document revealed that the businessperson, while in close contact with the Chinese embassy, had cultivated a relationship with the prince, conducting business in secret in venues as grand as Buckingham Palace.
A letter to Yang from Dominic Hampshire, a senior adviser to Prince Andrew, was discovered by U.K. security officials on his phone. It said that, in the mind of the royal and his family, “you sit at the very top of a tree that many, many people would like to be on.”
The correspondence added that the prince and Hampshire had “found a way to carefully remove those people who we don ’t completely trust. Under your guidance, we found a way to get the relevant people unnoticed in and out of the house in Windsor,” a reference to Andrew’s palatial residence near Windsor Castle. The revelation has triggered calls for a security review of the advisers working for Andrew and other royals.
Born in China in around 1974, Yang moved to the U.K. to study, ultimately gaining a master’s degree in public administration from York University in 2003.
He anglicized his name to “Chris Yang” and set up a company helping business leaders in Beijing to network internationally. Among his work in the U.K. was a role helping to organize the first U.K.-China Business Leaders’ Summit, where he rubbed shoulders with then-Chancellor George Osborne.
Along with the prime minister of the day, David Cameron, Osborne was a proponent of the “golden era” of positive relations between Beijing and London, which some Conservatives now believe naively under-estimated the risk to British national security.
Yang rose to become the head of the Chinese arm of Prince Andrew’s entrepreneur business scheme Pitch@Palace, alongside his own business Hampton Group, which had contracts with China’s state broadcaster. Yang was said to have been to Buckingham Palace, the King’s most prestigious residence, on at least two occasions as a guest of the prince.
“Useful idiot”
Andrew was forced to pull out from his family’s Christmas celebrations, British newspapers reported on Sunday, amid public anger over his role in a second major scandal in five years. He was labeled as “one of Beijing’s so-called ‘useful idiots’” by former Conservative MP Bob Seely, as lawmakers in the House of Commons held a fiery debate over how, as former Tory Leader Iain Duncan Smith put it, “someone who was known to the security services was allowed to get so close to a member of the royal family.”
Duncan Smith told his fellow MPs the alleged spy was not a “lone wolf” but one of 40,000 members of the United Front Works Department, an arm of the Chinese Communist Party which seeks to wield influence abroad.
Sari Arho Havrén, a specialist in China’s foreign relations at the RUSI think tank, told POLITICO: “A close relationship with Prince Andrew could serve multiple purposes — ‘elite capture’ for one. These are influential people who can speak positively on behalf of the Chinese government, potentially influence the royal family from within, and thus act as a Beijing-friendly power base within the U.K.
“A close relationship with Prince Andrew can also open doors to other meaningful contacts and people where a close relationship to a member of the royal family works as a gateway and guarantee of reliability.
“And here, Yang was quite successful, as he did gain access to senior politicians, for instance former prime ministers.”
Political damage
As well as royalty, Yang was photographed meeting two former prime ministers, Cameron and fellow Tory Theresa May, during his ascent to the highest echelons of British society. Their spokespeople said neither had any recollection of meeting the alleged spy, due to the high number of people they were introduced to in the course of their duties.
It was reported in 2018 that Yang was also a backer of a fashion firm established by the late American-British businessperson Barbara Judge — once described as “one of the best-connected women in Britain.”
News of the spy scandal could not have come at a worse time for Keir Starmer’s government, which is seeking to thaw Britain’s frosty relationship with China after years of bad-tempered exchanges between the state and the previous Conservative administration.
Starmer on Monday admitted that his government was “concerned about the challenge that China poses.” However, ministers appear wary of labeling China a threat to the U.K. as the new PM seeks to foster a deeper trading relationship in order to meet his own domestic plans for growth.
David Lammy, the foreign secretary, welcomed the court’s decision to uphold the ban on Yang coming to the U.K., stressing that Britain would take action where “individuals pose a threat,” and adding: “This case does not exist, sadly, in a vacuum.”
The Labour government has made a series of attempts at a rapprochement with Beijing since coming to power, with Starmer last month becoming the first U.K. prime minister to meet President Xi Jinping in person since 2018. His visit came after Foreign Secretary David Lammy visited China in October — only the second such visit in six years — with Energy Secretary Ed Miliband and Chancellor Rachel Reeves expected to follow in 2025.
Delayed
The developments come as the government seeks to complete its so-called “China Audit” of its foreign policy stance towards Beijing. POLITICO reported in October that work on the assessment of the relationship is due to wrap up early next year.
The China audit is also set to include further details of the U.K.’s register of foreign lobbyists — the Foreign Influence Registration Scheme (FIRS) — as part of an effort to shield British interests from foreign actors such as Russia, Iran, and China.
FIRS has been held up, as government officials and ministers grapple over whether to designate China as a threat in the scheme.
On Monday the Times reported China would be spared from being put in the “enhanced” tier of the FIRS scheme, which would require greater scrutiny of the state’s involvement in U.K. businesses and institutions, while Reuters reported that the government was set to fast-track its refresh of China relations in order to get on with its economic priorities.
Steve Tsang, director of the SOAS university’s China Institute, said: “With so much China is doing, something is bound to become known at some point that will require the reset button being pressed again. How many times this button can be pressed is a political issue, not a physical one.
“Beijing will not like the public backlash against the news of the infiltration, but there is not a lot it can actually do unless it is prepared to see [the] relationship worsen.
“It is not in the interest of either government to put U.K.-China relations on a downward spiral at the moment, so Beijing may try not to react too much, unless the issue snowballs in the U.K. and it gets too embarrassing for Beijing to avoid a direct response.”
John Johnston contributed to this report.
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