Westminster ‘spy’ fought Belfast schoolgirl bullies using kung fu

Lee, who relocated to Birmingham as a young adult, has described how she gathered other girls together and taught them kung fu as a way of fighting back against the bullies.

She did not name the school attended during her teenage years.

Ms Lee, 59, is the founder of the British Chinese Project but also a legal adviser to the Chinese Embassy in London and the Consulate General in Belfast.

She previously said her father owned Chinese restaurants in Northern Ireland and that he was the founder of what was described in reports as the Chinese Community Association.

Ms Lee, in a recorded interview, described how she went to a “very good school” here after arriving with her family from Hong Kong in 1974 but had to fight back against girl bullies.

“When you have a different culture and a different understanding of each other then the bullying starts,” she said.

“During that time at the boarding school there is a lot of weaker boarders. When I say weaker that means they… have problems, emotional problems or physically they look a bit fat or whatever.

“The children bullied them as well so I gathered them together and I say to these children ‘if you can get together then you can stand up to all these bullies’.

“And they were OK with me.

“So I started to teach them about kung fu. I did not know much about kung fu, just watched the Bruce Lee on TV so that I just pretend to know.

“And every time the girls were ganging up on us and I would say to my girls we have go to stand up for ourselves and we have got to fight. We pretend to be fighting and the other side see how strong we were… they immediately fled.

“I realised then that if you get together and be the strong voice then they would not bully us again and that works, that works really, really well.”

She has also spoken of how she was motivated to study and practise law because of her experiences in Belfast. She claimed to have arrived here from Hong Kong with little English.

“I was emotionally abused by them,” she told the Birmingham Post in June 2001. “They called me c****y and from a young age I was treated like a second class citizen.” In another interview with China Daily, Ms Lee said: “It was very difficult for a young girl to leave her home and her beloved grandparents and come to live in a cold place.

“My English was poor and I couldn’t really communicate with the boarders, which put me in a weaker position. There was not so much physical bullying, but a lot of verbal bullying.”

Ms Lee’s habit of putting seven teaspoons of sugar into her coffee to balance its bitterness attracted the attention of the other students, she said. One day, seven teaspoons of salt were put in her coffee.

“The girls who were watching thought I would not drink it, but I told myself to drink the entire cup, and show them that I am not weak,” she said.

MI5 last week circulated a warning to MPs that Ms Lee had been engaged in “political interference activities” on behalf of China’s government.

Wang Wenbin, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson, said some people may have seen “too many James Bond films” when questioned about the warning. He added that China “has no need and will never engage in so-called political interference activities”.

Several MPs reportedly took donations from Ms Lee, including Labour’s Barry Gardiner. He received more than £500,000 over six years to cover staffing costs in his office.