China’s prestigious Tsinghua University has been forced to recant the effusive welcome it gave to a British man named Oliver Rothschild after a Chinese newspaper reported he was not a member of the famous European banking family.

In China as elsewhere, the Rothschild name is synonymous with wealth and banking. Mr Rothschild, a consultant and board member to small companies and charities in Britain, does not claim on his website or LinkedIn profile to be a member of the banking family. However, some of his audiences in China may have been under the impression he was.

After his meeting this year with the president of Tsinghua, China’s top engineering school, the university put out a press release gushing about the member of the “ninth generation of Rothschilds”, triggering enquiries by the People’s Daily, the Communist party mouthpiece.