A British university is awarding degrees to trainees from a Chinese company accused of developing software that targets dissidents.

The University of the West of England Bristol has launched an education programme for software engineers working at the research institute of the Chinese IT giant Neusoft.

Students in China will study on a four-year course and receive degrees from both the Neusoft Institute in Guangdong and the UWE Bristol.

Neusoft has come under fire following reports the company had secured a contract to build surveillance software specifically targeting journalists, foreign students and members of the oppressed Uyghur population in China.

The company, which is one of the largest software firms in China, has secured the contract from the Chinese province of Henan, according to documents revealed by surveillance analysts IPVM.

UWE Bristol has described Neusoft’s Guangdong research centre as a “national training base for much-needed skilled talents”. The course launched in September last year. Students will have the opportunity to spend up to a year studying in Bristol as part of the course.

Neusoft has been building ties with British universities for many years. It toured the universities of Warwick, Sheffield, Leeds and York as part of a Chinese recruitment fair in 2007. 

The company returned to the University of York for a careers event alongside PwC, Shell and IBM in 2010. It has built a string of research institutes across China to provide a pipeline of thousands of trained graduates for its business each year.

Tom Tugendhat, chairman of the foreign affairs select committee, said: “The Chinese Communist Party is building a surveillance state and it’s being kitted out by China’s homegrown tech companies. British universities will have to find a better way to manage their research partnerships.”

Radomir Tylecote of think tank Civitas said: “These reports about connections between Neusoft and our universities suggest once again that, while UK institutions will enter these partnerships with the best of intentions, they may not always take seriously enough the risks of scientific collaborations for security and human rights.”

Johnny Patterson of campaign group Human Rights Watch said: “British thinking is helping upscale the Chinese surveillance state through these tech partnerships and that is deeply troubling.

“These Chinese firms are extremely large. Some of what they do is relatively anodyne, but some of what they do isn’t, and universities need to know what they are getting into.”

A spokesman for UWE Bristol said: “The partnership is an educational initiative only and does not relate to Neusoft’s business arrangements.”

Neusoft did not respond to a request for comment.