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Alleged Chinese spy Yang Tengbo, who forged links with Prince Andrew and mixed with other British establishment figures, has insisted that he has “done nothing wrong or unlawful”.
Yang said it was “entirely untrue” to claim he was involved in espionage and said he was a victim of a “political climate” which had seen a rise in tensions between the UK and China.
A businessman, Yang became a “close” confidant of Prince Andrew, the Duke of York, and has also been pictured with senior politicians including former conservative prime ministers David Cameron and Theresa May.
In a statement after a High Court judge lifted an order granting him anonymity, Yang he said: “Due to the high level of speculation and misreporting in the media and elsewhere, I have asked my legal team to disclose my identity”.

“I have done nothing wrong or unlawful and the concerns raised by the Home Office against me are ill-founded. The widespread description of me as a ‘spy’ is entirely untrue,” he added.
Yang last week lost an appeal over a decision to bar him from entering the UK on national security grounds.
Yang was known in the legal case only as H6 until the anonymity order was lifted on Monday.
He is listed as a director of Hampton Group International, a business consultancy which claims to act as a bridge between China and the rest of the world.
When relations are good, and Chinese investment is sought, I am welcome in the UK. When relations sour … I am excluded
Yang Tengbo
The 50-year-old worked as a junior civil servant in China before heading to the UK in 2002 to study and he was granted indefinite leave to remain in 2013.
Yang – also known as Christopher Yang – was the founder-partner of Pitch@Palace China.
The Pitch@Palace initiative was Prince Andrew’s scheme to support entrepreneurs.
Yang was first excluded from Britain by then-home secretary Suella Braverman in 2023, when the Home Office said he was believed to have carried out “covert and deceptive activity for the Communist Party”.

The businessman suggested he was a victim of increasingly hawkish views on China under the Conservative administration at the time.
“The political climate has changed and unfortunately, I have fallen victim to this,” Yang said.
He added: “When relations are good, and Chinese investment is sought, I am welcome in the UK. When relations sour, an anti-China stance is taken, and I am excluded.”
Judges at a specialist tribunal in London last week ruled Braverman had been “entitled to conclude” that he “represented a risk to national security” after he launched an appeal against the decision.
The businessman had brought a case to the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (SIAC) after his initial exclusion in 2023 but his appeal was dismissed.
In his statement, Yang hit out at the process which led to his ban from entering the UK.
“I have been excluded from seeing most of the evidence that was used against me under a process which is widely acknowledged by SIAC practitioners as inherently unfair: decisions are made based on secret evidence and closed proceedings, which has been described as ‘taking blind shots at a hidden target’,” Yang said.
“On their own fact finding, even the three judges in this case concluded that there was ‘not an abundance of evidence’ against me, their decision was ‘finely balanced’, and there could be an ‘innocent explanation’ for my activities. This has not been reported in the media,” he said.
A spokesperson at the Chinese foreign ministry said on Monday that China had always been open and above board and has never engaged in deception or interference. The spokesperson added that the groundless speculation was “not worth refuting”.
In a statement on its website, the Chinese embassy in London early on Tuesday urged “the UK side to immediately stop creating trouble, stop anti-China political manipulation, and stop undermining normal personnel exchanges between China and the UK”.
Relations between the UK and China have improved since Keir Starmer took office and in November he became the first prime minister to meet China’s President Xi Jinping since 2018.
But the prime minister acknowledged he was “concerned about the challenge that China poses”.
He defended his strategy for dealing with China: “Our approach is one of engagement, of cooperating where we need to cooperate, particularly on issues like climate change, to challenge where we must and where we should, particularly on issues like human rights, and to compete when it comes to trade”.
Amid the fallout from a fresh scandal, UK media reported that Andrew and his ex-wife Sarah Ferguson would not join his brother King Charles and the royal family at Sandringham for Christmas this year.
Prince Andrew’s reputation was already in tatters over his ties to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, which saw him forced to step back from frontline royal duties and stripped of his honorary military titles.
A statement from Andrew’s office last week said he had “followed advice” from the government and “ceased all contact with the individual after concerns were raised”.
“The duke met the individual through official channels, with nothing of a sensitive nature ever discussed,” it added.
Additional reporting by Reuters and Agence France-Presse


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Yang Tengbo says the description of him as a spy are ‘entirely untrue’, that he is a victim of a ‘political climate’


Yang Tengbo says the description of him as a spy are ‘entirely untrue’, that he is a victim of a ‘political climate’.
