Huawei has been accused of “reputation laundering” after it emerged that it funded a Cambridge University college study on global governance reforms in communications and technology.

The Chinese technology giant gave a research grant to the China-UK Global Issues Dialogue Centre at Jesus College, which funded a forum in October for 36 senior people in politics, business and academia. The forum led to a white paper, published online this week, that referred favourably to Huawei.

It said: “To stimulate competitors, all intellectual property associated with 5G has been made freely available by the CEO of Huawei, making this a fruitful time to be a European technology company working on these issues.” Last month Boris Johnson approved the use of its equipment in the non-sensitive