Human Rights Groups Want to Stop Telegraph Newspaper Sale Over China Concerns

The pro­posed sale of the Tele­graph to Red­Bird Cap­i­tal has prompt­ed inter­ven­tion calls from human rights orga­ni­za­tions con­cerned about media inde­pen­dence. On August 13, 2025, The Guardian report­ed that nine inter­na­tion­al NGOs includ­ing Index on Cen­sor­ship and Reporters With­out Bor­ders wrote to Cul­ture Sec­re­tary Lisa Nandy urg­ing inves­ti­ga­tion of the US pri­vate equi­ty company’s Chi­nese con­nec­tions that “threat­en media plu­ral­ism, trans­paren­cy and infor­ma­tion integri­ty in the UK.” The arti­cle begins:

A group of nine human rights and free­dom of expres­sion organ­i­sa­tions have called on the cul­ture sec­re­tary to halt Red­Bird Capital’s pro­posed £500m takeover of the Tele­graph and inves­ti­gate the US pri­vate equi­ty company’s ties to Chi­na. The inter­na­tion­al non-gov­ern­men­tal organ­i­sa­tions, which include Index on Cen­sor­ship, Reporters With­out Bor­ders and Arti­cle 19, have writ­ten to Lisa Nandy argu­ing that Red­Bird Capital’s links with Chi­na “threat­en media plu­ral­ism, trans­paren­cy and infor­ma­tion integri­ty in the UK”. A con­sor­tium led by Red­Bird Cap­i­tal agreed a deal in May to buy the Dai­ly Tele­graph and Sun­day Tele­graph, end­ing two years of uncer­tain­ty over the future of the titles.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2025/aug/13/ngo-urge-nandy-halt-sale-telegraph-china-links

Key Points

• Red­Bird Cap­i­tal chair John Thorn­ton sits on the advi­so­ry coun­cil of Chi­na Invest­ment Cor­po­ra­tion, the country’s largest sov­er­eign wealth fund, and pre­vi­ous­ly chaired the Silk Road Finance Corporation.
• The NGOs also include Hong Kong Watch, Human Rights in Chi­na, and the Hong Kong Democ­ra­cy Coun­cil, call­ing for Com­pe­ti­tion and Mar­kets Author­i­ty and Ofcom inves­ti­ga­tions with Chi­nese influ­ence oper­a­tion experts.
• Sep­a­rate­ly, Con­ser­v­a­tive leader Iain Dun­can Smith and peer David Alton raised con­cerns about £5.3m edi­to­r­i­al bud­get cuts that may vio­late takeover process restric­tions on edi­to­r­i­al struc­ture changes.
• Red­Bird Cap­i­tal denied Chi­nese involve­ment, stat­ing “there is no Chi­nese involve­ment or influ­ence” while empha­siz­ing press inde­pen­dence as fun­da­men­tal to its invest­ment approach in news organizations.

UK Chin,ese Influence Operations: Covert Campaigns, Academic Pressure, and Policy Gaps

China’s efforts to shape the UK’s polit­i­cal, aca­d­e­m­ic, media, and busi­ness envi­ron­ments are wide-rang­ing, often blend­ing pub­lic diplo­ma­cy with covert influ­ence oper­a­tions. The UK’s new­ly launched for­eign influ­ence reg­is­tra­tion scheme applies trans­paren­cy man­dates, but Chi­na was not includ­ed in the scheme’s most strin­gent tier, leav­ing con­cerns that eco­nom­ic pri­or­i­ties may out­weigh more robust nation­al secu­ri­ty steps.

Chi­nese influ­ence oper­a­tions via the Unit­ed Front Work Depart­ment have tar­get­ed British academia—with reports of stu­dents and aca­d­e­mics pres­sured to self-cen­sor, avoid sen­si­tive top­ics, and even mon­i­tor peers, cre­at­ing a cli­mate that under­mines free aca­d­e­m­ic exchange, as not­ed by UK par­lia­men­tary com­mit­tees and research orga­ni­za­tions. Mean­while, pub­lic expo­sure of UK fig­ures with alleged ties to Chi­nese influ­ence net­works high­lights the depth of Beijing’s reach into Britain’s polit­i­cal and busi­ness elites.

Addi­tion­al cam­paigns, such as fund­ing British YouTu­bers to advance state-aligned mes­sag­ing, ampli­fy pro-CCP nar­ra­tives and blur bound­aries between inde­pen­dent media and state-dri­ven pro­pa­gan­da. Yet despite these inter­ven­tions, imple­men­ta­tion of Britain’s reg­u­la­to­ry coun­ter­mea­sures remains uneven, with crit­ics point­ing to per­sis­tent enforce­ment gaps and a ten­den­cy to pri­or­i­tize com­mer­cial inter­ests over full-spec­trum secu­ri­ty concerns.

Insti­tu­tion­al watch­dogs and par­lia­men­tary inquiries have char­ac­ter­ized Chi­nese influ­ence activ­i­ties as “fla­grant” inci­dents of transna­tion­al repres­sion, with doc­u­ment­ed cas­es of harass­ment and coer­cion against crit­ics, activists, and minor­i­ty com­mu­ni­ties on UK soil.

Exter­nal References:

1. What the UK must get right in its Chi­na strat­e­gy – Chatham House
2. Beijing’s grow­ing influ­ence, sup­pres­sion of aca­d­e­m­ic free­dom in UK uni­ver­si­ties – Eco­nom­ic Times
3. Par­lia­men­tary com­mit­tee labels Chi­na ‘fla­grant’ per­pe­tra­tor of transna­tion­al repres­sion on UK soil – ICIJ

Disclaimer

The Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) employs AI through­out the post­ing process, includ­ing gen­er­at­ing sum­maries of news items, the intro­duc­tion, key points, and often the “con­text” sec­tion. We rec­om­mend ver­i­fy­ing all infor­ma­tion before use. Addi­tion­al­ly, images are AI-gen­er­at­ed and intend­ed sole­ly for illus­tra­tive pur­pos­es. While they rep­re­sent the events or indi­vid­u­als dis­cussed, they should not be inter­pret­ed as real-world photography.