Member

I say gently to the noble Lord, Lord Black of Brentwood, that the proposed acquisition of the Telegraph Media Group by RedBird Capital Partners is not merely a commercial transaction but a matter of national interest and democratic integrity. To be clear, the chairman of RedBird, John Thornton, is a board member of Chinese state-backed companies including Lenovo and the China Investment Corporation. He has openly advocated for China to “get into” English language media. By the way, he has received the PRC’s highest honour for foreigners—from a regime accused by the House of Commons of genocide in Xinjiang and which has incarcerated over 1,000 pro-democracy advocates in Hong Kong, including Jimmy Lai, the British national who has been such a champion of media freedom and paid such a price for it. Let us not forget: the CCP has long understood that controlling the narrative is as vital as controlling the army. Zhao Qizheng, a senior Chinese official, put it bluntly in saying that they