China is back in the news, this time for allegedly spying on the U.K. British media is agog with reports about a Chinese national who got too close for comfort with a U.K. royal and invited allegations of espionage. The person, since identified as 50-year-old Yang Tengbo, stands banned from the U.K. The issue dominated British front pages and news broadcasts.
So who is Yang Tengbo? What did he do? And how did he manage to get into the inner circle of the British royal family? More on that in just a bit but first, what you should know is that this is not the only instance of Chinese spy scandals to hit the U.K.
On 17 December, a London tribunal ruled that British domestic spy agency M.I.-5 acted lawfully when it raised an alert about one Christine Lee in January 2022. The Hong Kong-born British national lost her legal challenge against the agency for accusing her of carrying out political interference activities in the U.K. on behalf of China’s ruling Communist Party. She had, allegedly, facilitated financial donations to serving and aspiring lawmakers on behalf of foreign nationals based in Hong Kong and China.
Five days prior to that, on 12 December, a London court set 10 March 2025 as the date for the start of a trial of two dual Chinese and British citizens accused of assisting Hong Kong’s foreign intelligence service in Britain. 64-year-old Chung Biu-yuen and 39-year-old Chi Leung-wai pleaded not guilty. Chung is a retired Hong Kong police officer, who was employed as a manager at the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office in London. Chi worked in the U.K. Border Force.
On the same day, that is 12 December, a Special Immigration Appeals Commission upheld a British Government order banning a person, identified only as H-6, for allegedly spying on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party. The person’s identity has since been revealed as Yang Tengbo. Yang appealed against the ban at the Special Immigration Appeals Commission, which rejected his case, in a written ruling, on 12 December. It was the first time that the case had come to light…
So, here’s what we know about the man in question. Yang Tengbo, also known as Christopher or Chris Yang, was born on 21 March 1974. He worked as a civil servant in China for some years. In 2002, he came to the U.K. to study. He completed a Master’s Degree in Public Administration and Public Policy at the University of York. In 2005, he founded a company called Newland U.K. By 2010, it had reported a turnover of 1.5 million dollars. In 2013, he was granted indefinite leave to remain in the U.K. He changed the name of his company to Hampton Group International in 2020. In 2021, he was stopped at a U.K. port and told to surrender his electronic devices. He filed a case in 2022 to stop the U.K. from retaining his data. He won the initial case, only to lose it on appeal. In 2023, he was off-boarded from a flight to London when returning from Beijing. The same year, the then U.K. Home Secretary Suella Braverman cancelled his indefinite leave to remain in the U.K. He was informed about it, upon which, on 4 April 2023, he submitted an application to the Special Immigration Appeals Commission for review.
Yang’s association with Prince Andrew began after the British royal stepped down as a roving U.K. trade ambassador in 2011. The 64-year-old prince, who is the eighth in line to the British throne, founded what is known as Pitch@Palace in 2014. It’s a platform that gathers global leaders in various areas and helps start-ups with resources. At the event, entrepreneurs and start-ups are invited to make a 3-minute pitch to investors. In October 216, the Prince launched this platform in Beijing, China. Yang was involved in organising it of course. By 2020, Yang had already become a confidant of Prince Andrew and acted on his behalf with investors in China. He is reported to have used his high-profile connections to secure invitations to Buckingham Palace and other royal residences. The Prince’s aide, Dominic Hampshire, wrote a letter to Yang in 2020 that read — “I also hope that it is clear to you where you sit with my principal and indeed his family. You should never underestimate the strength of that relationship… Outside of his closest internal confidants, you sit at the very top of a tree that many, many people would like to be on”. In 2022, Yang invested in a company floated by Dominic Hampshire. The Commission hearing Yang’s appeal for review noted in its ruling that his relationship with Prince Andrew had a covert and clandestine element and that Yang was in a position to generate relationships between senior Chinese officials and prominent U.K. figures which could be leveraged for political interference purposes by the Chinese State.
Interestingly, what is common to Yang Tengbo and Christine Lee is the United Front Work Department of the Chinese Communist Party. Both Yang and Lee had links to this high-level Party body that reports directly to the C.C.P.’s Central Committee. It comprises four subordinate offices and nine specialised bureaux, each dealing with a particular targeted group such as China’s eight officially-approved non-Communist political parties, ethnic minorities, and Chinese communities overseas. President Xi Jinping recently expanded the U.F.W.D. by establishing two new bureaux. One which targets representatives of the New Social Classes, is responsible for garnering support from China’s new middle class, and, the other cultivates loyalty and suppresses separatism among the Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities.
The U.F.W.D. was founded in the 20th century. An Australian National University study cites Mao Zedong as calling the U.F.W.D. as one of the three secret weapons, along with the armed forces and party-building, which helped the Chinese Communist Party to come to power in 1949. Similarly, Chinese leader Xi Jinping has described it as a magic weapon to bolster Beijing’s reach abroad. Xi revived it after he came to power in 2012. Under Xi, the Department is tasked to work with Chinese diaspora overseas for getting positive coverage for China in foreign media and tracking the activities of critics of the Chinese Government. The U.F.W.D. has expanded over the last few years by thousands of new cadres. Historically, the Taiwanese, Tibetans and Uyghurs have been the Department’s targets. Reuters news agency reported in 2015 that the U.F.W.D. has been supporting the anti-Dalai Lama Dorje Shugden Movement, whose members protest appearances by the Dalai Lama around the world. New entrants to its list of targets include the children of China’s nouveau riche and Chinese studying overseas.
The U.F.W.D. is active on other continents, too, including North America. In September 2024, Linda Sun, a former aide in the New York Governor’s office, was arrested and charged with allegedly acting as an undisclosed foreign agent for the Chinese Government. She was reported to have met a U.F.W.D. official in 2017. In 2023, Liang Litang, a U.S. citizen who ran a Chinese restaurant in Boston, was indicted for providing information about Chinese dissidents in the area to his contacts in the U.F.W.D. In 2020, the U.S. imposed visa restrictions on people seen as active in U.F.W.D. activities. A 2018 report published by the U.S.–China Economic and Security Review Commission says that the U.F.W.D. seeks to co-opt ethnic Chinese individuals and communities living outside China, while a number of other key affiliated organisations guided by China’s broader United Front strategy conduct influence operations targeting foreign actors and states. Some of these entities have clear connections to the C.C.P.’s United Front strategy. The U.S. and some of its allies accuse the Department of interfering in their affairs.
What makes these allegations of espionage that much more credible is that China passed a law in 2017 mandating Chinese nationals and companies to share information with the Chinese Government, which effectively turns a Chinese national into a potential spy.