Conservatives in Britain are scrambling to block a U.S. private equity firm with deep ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) from taking over one of the country’s most iconic newspapers.
RedBird Capital Partners, chaired by American financier and longtime CCP confidant John L. Thornton, is angling to buy The Daily Telegraph, the 169-year-old broadsheet that has defined Britain’s center-right press for generations. Critics warn the deal, cloaked as a routine commercial transaction, risks undermining the independence of Britain’s free press and handing Beijing a subtle but dangerous lever of influence.
Thornton acted as an inaugural member of the International Advisory Council for the China Investment Corporation (CIC), the country’s sovereign wealth fund. He served as a professor and Director of the Global Leadership Program at the state-linked, elite Tsinghua University in Beijing, and chaired the Silk Road Finance Corporation, a financing body for Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road Initiative. Thornton also received the Friendship Award in 2008, the highest state honor the People’s Republic of China can give a foreigner for service to its national interests.
In 2023, Thornton encouraged Chinese officials to “get into” English-language channels.
“The English language dominates the world’s communication channels,” Thornton said during a lecture at the University of Texas at Austin. “You recognize that you literally don’t participate in them at all, so the Chinese story, as it were, is told by people who are not Chinese, and guess what, they don’t know the story as well, they don’t tell it as well, and so it’s entirely absent and until you start to get into those channels you’re going to be a big, big disadvantage.”
The company itself is also affiliated with the Chinese state.
RedBird is co-invested with Tencent, a Chinese tech giant defined by the U.S. Department of Defense as a Chinese military company, says an article written by Luke de Pulford, creator and executive director of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC). RedBird has also established headquarters in Hong Kong, meaning it is now subject to China’s national security laws.
RedBird’s takeover hinges on approval from the British government. Just last year, Parliament passed a law barring foreign governments from owning or exerting influence over U.K. news outlets, capping ownership stakes at 5%.
Now, however, ministers are moving to gut their own safeguard. The Labour government is pushing through the Draft Enterprise Act Regulations, which would triple the foreign ownership cap to 15% — conveniently clearing the exact threshold RedBird needs to finalize the Telegraph deal, according to de Pulford.
A high-angle view of the Daily Telegraph Building entrance as pedestrians pass cars parked outside the building on street level, in the City of London, England, August 1962. (Photo by Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
A person familiar with the deal who spoke on the condition of anonymity said some lawmakers are getting spooked by how the British government appears to be favoring RedBird’s takeover of The Telegraph over other bidders, including changing British law to make it happen.
A coalition of peers in the House of Lords is set to vote Tuesday on a “fatal motion” — a rare procedural move that would kill the proposed regulation outright and halt the Telegraph deal in its tracks.
IPAC, which has led opposition to the deal, is working with lawmakers in both chambers to flag national security concerns over the influence RedBird’s backers — and their CCP ties — could exert on the paper.
The source alleged that there is a trend to remain quiet on the issue in the broader British media, which suggests that there are influences behind the deal that are not simply business-led. Only a handful of outlets have covered concerns over RedBird’s ties to the CCP.
Member of the House of Lords take their seats in the Lords Chamber, ahead of the State Opening of Parliament, in the Houses of Parliament, in London, on July 17, 2024. (Photo by HENRY NICHOLLS / POOL / AFP) (Photo by HENRY NICHOLLS/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)
This is not just a British concern, either. Skydance, of which RedBird is a minority investor, has also been trying to acquire Paramount. Tencent, the Chinese military company, is invested in Skydance, raising eyebrows within the U.S.
