Suspected Chinese Agent Among Group Which Clashed With British Pianist

Screenshot of live streamed footage showing Christine Lee (circled) looking on after Newton Leng (off screen) shouted at pianist Brendan Kavanagh (R) at St Pancras International station in London on Jan. 19, 2024. Brendan Kavanagh/YouTube screenshot

A suspected Chinese agent previously named by the MI5 was among the group which clashed with a British pianist at London’s St Pancras station this month, it was confirmed on Sunday.

Mengying Liu, who was involved in the row on Jan. 19, confirmed the rumour on X, formerly known as Twitter, “Christine Lee was in the back with my boyfriend, but she was just accompanying.”

Ms. Lee was named by the MI5 in Jan. 2022 in an alert to Parliament. She was accused by the security agency of being involved in political interference activities on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

Ms. Liu, a social media influencer on YouTube and several Chinese platforms, who also operates a career-coaching company for Chinese people in Britain, also doubled down on her accusation that the pianist, Brendan Kavanagh, was being “racist” towards the group by playing a tune called “Ching Cheng Hanji.”

Mr. Kavanagh denied the accusation, telling The Epoch Times he played the song because it was “the only one of the few Chinese songs” that he knows.

Mr. Kavanagh, a Boogie-woogie pianist who has over two million subscribers on YouTube, had a friendly interaction with a Chinese TV crew, which Ms. Liu was a part of, on Jan. 19, according to footage on the pianist’s channel.

The same video also shows Mr. Kavanagh’s acquaintance Jim, who said he was there to film a TV programme with a Japanese crew.

During a livestream that followed, Ms. Liu approached Mr. Kavanagh and his camera person, asking the pianist not to broadcast their images because what they were doing was “non-disclosable.”

Ms. Liu said later in a video that her group was filming for an unspecified Chinese platform ahead of the Chinese New Year, and that it was confidential until then, but this was not communicated during the argument, which got heated after a man in the group, Newton Leng, got involved.

Mr. Leng asserted that they had “image rights,” threatened Mr. Kavanagh with lawsuits if he didn’t comply with their request, and accused Mr. Kavanagh of racism after the latter said they were “not in communist China.”

When Mr. Kavanagh tried to take a small Chinese flag from a woman’s hand to show it on camera, Mr. Leng began shouting “don’t touch her” repeatedly, adding, “You are not the same age,” despite the fact the pair had shaken hands earlier.

The woman, Adelina Zhang, was later revealed to have hosted various galas for the Chinese embassy, and pictured with a number of senior British politicians, including Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt and former Prime Minister Theresa May.

Mr. Leng used to be a school teacher involved in China’s Confucius Institute.

Netizens also claimed that a woman in the background was Ms. Lee, and the claim was confirmed by Ms. Liu.

Screenshot of footage showing pianist Brendan Kavanagh speaking to NTD, a sister media company of The Epoch Times, at St Pancras International station on Jan. 26, 2024. Jane Werrell/NTD

In Jan. 2022, MI5 took the unusual step of issuing an alert to Parliament, saying Ms. Lee had “acted covertly in co-ordination with the UFWD”—an arm of the CCP’s Central Committee responsible for gaining political influence in and outside of China—and “is judged to be involved in political interference activities in the UK.”

The security agency said Ms. Lee had been facilitating financial donations to political parties and politicians and warned that anyone contacted by her should be “mindful of her affiliation with the Chinese state and remit to advance the CCP’s agenda in UK politics.”

MI5 Director-General Ken McCallum later suggested that the agency couldn’t prosecute foreign agents such as Ms. Lee because the archaic British law didn’t criminalise being a covert agent of a foreign power.

Ms. Lee has denied the allegations against her and initiated legal proceedings last summer stating her intention to sue MI5.

Mr. Kavanagh said he believes the arrival of Ms. Lee may have contributed to the confrontation.

“The atmosphere changed for two reasons, first of all, when they got their flags out, and secondly, when Christine Lee turned up,” he said.

“First of all, I didn’t understand Newton’s behaviour but I actually think he was trying to impress Christine Lee with his ‘don’t shout me’ [sic]. I think he was trying to get a good report back to Beijing because the atmosphere completely changed when she turned up, and I think he was just trying to be the big man in front of the senior CCP spy. That’s my theory.”

Zhang Pu, writer, novelist, and the Chinese translator of his sister Jung Chang’s award-winning autobiography “Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China,” told The Epoch Times that he believes Mr. Leng’s outburst isn’t necessarily connected to Ms. Lee’s presence.

If the group didn’t want to be filmed, “they could have just left,” Mr. Zhang said, adding that they were being vexatious for no obvious reason.

Accusation of Racism

Ms. Liu has also accused Mr. Kavanagh of racism after the livestream went viral, saying he had referred to the group as a Japanese TV crew after Ms. Zhang had told him she was Chinese, and played Ching Cheng Hanji in front of them.

She doubled down on her accusation in a video posted on X on Tuesday.

Speaking to The Epoch Times on Tuesday, Mr. Kavanagh said, “I realised that they were Chinese, but I actually thought they were under the umbrella of the Japanese TV crew.”

“So when I said we’re with the Japanese, I thought that the Japanese were filming the Chinese. It was just a complete mix up,”  he added.

Asking about the song “Ching Cheng Hanji,” he said, it’s “obviously the only one of the few Chinese songs that I know.”

“There’s some old Chinese man singing Ching Cheng Hanji on the internet and I was amazed how similar it was to Irish music,” he said, adding that he loves the melody.

Mr. Kavanagh, who is of Irish descent, said he had “always noticed” similarities between traditional Chinese music and the traditional Irish Sean Nós Singing.

It appears Ching Cheng Hanji is an edit of Chinese Opera “Judge Bao and the Qin Xianglian Case” which went viral several years ago.

It was considered racist by some—possibly because the edit made the first two characters sound like “Ching Chong,” which is said to be part of a racist children’s song from the past century that mimics a stereotypical sound of the Chinese language—possibly because of a video that combined the song with a clip of Tom and Jerry.

The clip, from a 1942 episode “Puss n' Toots,” shows Tom the cat spinning on a record player, with a record on his head that looks like a stereotypical conical hat.

Mr. Kavanagh said it’s “completely ridiculous” to assume he was racist because of the tune, and added that the tune was not what had caused the row in the first place.

“They didn’t recognise the song when I played it. It was only after they went away that somebody told them that I was playing this. So it’s not like I was playing Ching Cheng Hanji and they immediately thought,‘ Oh, he’s being provocative.’” he said.

“And these people are grasping at straws because they’ve got to—because they’re so in the wrong and expert gaslighters—they’ve got to grasp at something to, you know, make it sound like they’re in the right,” he said.

Mr. Kavanagh said the saga is “over” as far as he’s concerned.

“I’m moving on, but she is now going on YouTube sites continuing this nonsense, so I’m leaving it now,” he said.

In a video posted on YouTube after the interview, Mr. Kavanagh said he had just seen a tweet on X posted by Ms. Liu on Sunday, claiming there was an “ongoing lawsuit” against Mr. Kavanagh “for defamation and privacy reasons,” and asked legal advice.

He subsequently told The Epoch Times in a message that he had not received any pre-action letters.

Asked about the racism claims, Mr. Zhang said he believed Mr. Kavanagh was right.

“If you watched the video, they began throwing around the accusation of racism when Mr. Kavanagh said the Chinese flag was ‘communist,’ that’s when they responded with [the accusation of] racism.'”

“The don’t dare to admit they’re communist because the CCP is notorious,” he said, “so they felt they are being discriminated upon when people call them communists.”

Mr. Zhang said the group “behaved so badly, it’s stupid,” adding that they have been criticised by both pro-CCP individuals and anti-CCP individuals on social media.

The incident “angered Chinese all over the world,” he said, “because it’s so embarrassing.”

Following the debacle, the piano accidentally became a symbol of freedom, where pro-democracy hongkongers visited.

However, pianist Jazzua Leung, who was filmed playing “Glory to Hong Kong,” had his YouTube channel removed on Thursday.

The Epoch Times has reached out to Google for comment on Friday and followed up with a further email on Tuesday.