The London Times (October 18) disclosed that their investigation revealed that leading English
private schools are making tens of millions of pounds from franchises with close ties to the Chinese
Communist Party. The board of Harrow International School Hong Kong, whose sprawling campus
was built with an interest-free £22.5 million loan from the Hong Kong government, includes four
senior
Communist Party members. The website of one of Dulwich College’s nine associated Chinese
campuses lists policies and procedures for turning children into party members. The founding
members of Westminster School’s main Chinese campus include a party secretary and a
businessman who advises Beijing on Tibet. Shropshire’s Concord College has an affiliate in
Shanghai run in partnership with a businessman who owns a stake in a company that supplies
equipment to the Chinese military. Twenty British schools have made an estimated £67 million in
the past 15 years from international franchises,
most in China. A tax loophole has let the schools avoid up to £13 million in corporation tax from
franchise fees. The board of Harrow International School Hong Kong, where fees can reach £30,000
a year, is chaired by Kenneth Lau, whose profile on the school’s website outlines his vision of
instilling Hong Kong youngsters with “a strong commitment, unity, and a sense of belongingness
towards the Motherland”. The Harrow name is licensed to Asia International School Limited (AISL),
a Cayman-based company formed by the Chinese billionaire Daniel Chiu and Ian Taylor, a deceased
Tory politician.
The arrangement has generated more than £19 million for Harrow’s parent charity. The independent
governors include Peter Lee, a British-educated property developer and chairman of the One
Country Two Systems Research Institute, a Communist Party-affiliated think tank that campaigns
for closer ties between Beijing and Hong Kong, and Johnny Mok, a barrister who defended Hong
Kong police against accusations of brutality in 2016. It said an analysis of up to 15 years of
subsidiary company annual accounts by The Times found that British private schools classed up to
£67 millions of income from these overseas franchises as tax-exempt charitable donations under gift
aid rules. About £13 million would have been due in corporation tax had the profits not been donated
|
