Reputedly founded by an Anglo-Saxon king, back in 631, Thetford Grammar’s Norman ruins and gabled Tudor buildings are testament to this country’s deepest history. The school’s people are archetypically English, too: one past head was the Duke of Norfolk, who bested the Scots at Flodden, and its most famous alumnus is Thomas Paine, author of Common Sense and champion of the American Revolution.

Now, though, this ancient school has fallen in with a very different kind of radicalism: that of Mao Zedong and the Chinese Communist Party. UnHerd has discovered that this Hong Kong-listed company, purchased by China Financial Service Holdings (CFSH) in 2017,  has direct links to both the CCP and the Chinese state. Nor is Thetford Grammar, deep in the East Anglian fens, particularly unique.

Over recent years, Chinese investors with strong links to the Communist Party have bought dozens of independent schools right across the country. No less striking, some of Britain’s most illustrious schools have opened branches in the People’s Republic itself, with each new acquisition sparking worry among senior officials in Whitehall.

Shadowed by similar acquisitions across the Atlantic, including New York Military Academy, the alma mater of President Trump, it all speaks to China’s soaring geopolitical heft — right at the heart of the West’s educational establishment. No less important, it hints at a sophisticated campaign of foreign influence across global education, with the British government ominously slow to react.

With fewer than 200 pupils, Thetford is not a big school, one its head Amanda Faye says is “fully committed to delivering a high-quality British education, rooted in our history and tradition, while preparing young people to thrive in today’s global society”.

That cosmopolitan perspective is arguably clear in the attention the school has enjoyed from China over the last decade. Consider CFSH’s directors, several of whom have enjoyed successful careers in state institutions. Zhang Min, its executive director, worked for over 20 years at the state-owned China Construction Bank. Chan Chun Keung, for his part, is both a long-time CFSH non-executive director, as well as a consultant to the All-China Federation of Returned Overseas Chinese — an innocuous name, but an organisation controlled by a body called the United Front Work Department (UFWD).

Like Mao before him, President Xi Jinping has described the United Front as a “magic weapon”. This makes sense: both at home and abroad, it deploys its multi-billion dollar budget, as well as a tangle of affiliated bodies, to impose ideological conformity on Chinese citizens and those of Chinese descent abroad. It also mounts aggressive foreign influence operations, targeting both institutions and individuals. One recent example involves Prince Andrew, whose friend and business partner Yang Tengbo, now banned from entering Britain, was said to have been a leading UFWD operative.

Beyond these institutional links, meanwhile, there is evidence that people connected to Thetford Grammar have had direct contact with Chinese apparatchiks. In 2019, for instance, a school trustee called Peng Kai travelled at least twice to the central city of Changsha. A British citizen, with extensive business interests in the UK, he was there to discuss Thetford’s plan to establish a kindergarten and elementary school in China. On the afternoon of 23 December, Peng did just that: with several Communist Party and UFWD officials.

The trustees’ plans to expand Thetford have since been realised, with Faye telling me it currently has two such Chinese affiliates. But what does that mean for the school itself? Some educationalists aren’t concerned. Speaking last month, Julian Fisher, a former teacher at a Chinese branch of Harrow, insists that trends of the sort seen at Thetford are innocuous. If a school is facing closure, he said, accepting Chinese ownership made sense, even if it meant “introducing a noodles option at lunch”. The new owners wouldn’t “push curriculum or approach too heavily towards China,” Fisher added, “perhaps aside from adding the Chinese GCSE, introducing table tennis and celebrating Spring Festival”.

Faye echoed these sentiments, stating that Thetford’s Chinese owners “have no input into the way my staff teach, nor the content of the curriculum at any key stage”, and that she had never discussed this with them. “Like many schools,” she adds, “we celebrate cultural diversity through assemblies and curriculum topics. Chinese New Year has featured alongside assemblies on other world faiths and cultures.”

Others, however, are less relaxed. Speaking on condition of anonymity, a senior Whitehall official tells me that the purchase of schools in Britain by Chinese “state-linked businesses” is part of a conscious Communist Party strategy. “The Chinese state is trying to exert influence through private schools,” he says, “and it isn’t even being discreet about it.”

Clues to the possible deeper significance of Thetford Grammar’s change of ownership can be found in a pair of key documents, both published in Mandarin and both unreported until now. The first, entitled “China Education Modernisation 2035”, is a formal policy statement issued jointly by the Communist Party’s Central Committee and the Chinese government. To quote the 2019 document, its purpose is to show how education should advance the cause of “socialism with Chinese characteristics” as described by the Party’s current dogma, known as “Xi Jinping Thought”. This, the document argues, will encourage “the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation”.

As the paper continues, exporting Chinese educational concepts will serve the Belt and Road Initiative, President Xi’s all-encompassing plan to make China the world’s supreme power by 2049. To this end, foreign schools should be encouraged to develop partnerships with schools in China. At the same time, the document adds, China should also establish “overseas international schools with Chinese characteristics”.

This blend of education and ideology is similarly stark in another document, this one entitled “An Action Plan of Education For International Understanding”. Appearing in 2020, it was published by the Centre for China and Globalisation (CCG), a Beijing think tank that has close ties to none other than the UFWD. And as the CCG report makes clear, buying schools abroad has an underlying political purpose. “The internationalisation of China’s education must transcend mere capital outflow,” it says, and “should fundamentally represent an export of cultural ethos”. The ultimate goal, it adds, quoting the unnamed operator of a school abroad, is “to export China’s exemplary educational concepts through school acquisitions”.

As the “Action Plan” makes clear, meanwhile, this focus on primary and secondary education represents a change of strategy. Traditionally, Chinese educational policy abroad has focused on the Confucius Institutes, with over 500 launched at universities the world over. Over recent years, however, that number has fallen sharply: after Western politicians and journalists raised concerns about their influence. The CCG paper seems to acknowledge this, referencing “successive setbacks” faced by the Confucius scheme.

To avoid similar issues in future, the document instead argues, China’s effort to “go global” with its schools should reflect “an educational philosophy grounded in international understanding” — while also “preserving space for infusing Chinese culture and characteristics” on students. Overall, the document says, China must “accelerate the development of overseas schools with Chinese characteristics” by using private capital to purchase institutions in Europe, Asia and America. The report then lists some recent purchases: including Thetford Grammar.

Taken together, says Sam Dunning, director of the UK-China Transparency research group, the documents “provide clear evidence there has been high-level consideration of the strategic opportunities presented to the Chinese Communist Party by Chinese investors acquiring British schools”.

What’s in no doubt is that Chinese investors have happily taken the policy documents’ recommendations to heart. According to Venture Education, a Beijing consultancy, there are now some 73 “sister schools” in mainland China, affiliated with 30 independent schools in Britain. These encompass some of the most prestigious institutions in the country, including Dulwich College, Fettes and Harrow — which has no fewer than eight Chinese affiliates.

That’s shadowed by the over two-dozen British schools owned by Chinese entities, with Thetford Grammar joined by Malvern St James and Wisbech Grammar, among many others. One notable example is Kingsley School in Bideford. It is owned by China First Capital Group, a mangement consultancy which is itself partly owned by the government in Beijing.

Not that Britain is alone here, with Beijing funding initiatives at over 180 public schools in the US. That’s mirrored in the private sector: not least when it comes to the New York Military Academy. About 60 miles north of Manhattan, and just up the Hudson River from West Point, in 2015 it was sold to a nonprofit foundation backed by Vincent Tianquan Mo, the billionaire owner of China’s largest estate listing and search website.

That 2015 purchase attracted extensive media coverage. But the Mandarin internet reveals Mo’s extensive links to CCP bodies — including the ubiquitous United Front Work Department. In 2018, for instance, Mo was among 50 digital entrepreneurs who attended a UFWD conference at which President Xi outlined his thoughts on internet security: a euphemism for online surveillance and censorship. For his part, Mo stated that “more strategic guidance” is needed for online creators. Though he sold the Academy in 2025, Mo remains on its advisory board, even as his successor as chair has also praised Xi’s leadership.

And if Congressmen are now warning about rising Chinese influence in American education, their British counterparts are moving in a similar direction. In July, the China Audit, a high-level Foreign Office review, identified numerous ways in which Britain is vulnerable to Chinese influence. Most of its report is classified — yet the Government has issued a new National Security Strategy which states that “resilience” to Chinese threats must now be enhanced. It singles out the need for “guidance” to those involved in private education where China is a “partner”.

Discussing the Audit in Parliament, the then-Foreign Secretary David Lammy announced a £600 million increase in intelligence service budgets. But this, the Whitehall official tells me, is nothing like enough. “You are right to be worried,” he says, “but the British state doesn’t have sufficient resources to plug this hole in the dyke when there are so many other ones. Although we have upped the money to increase our focus on China, we are still struggling to keep up with a much better-resourced adversary.”

All the while, the broad financial picture means that more acquisitions are likely, as independent schools struggle to cope with the new imposition of VAT. With 50 such schools shuttering their doors already, Chinese buyers are waiting in the wings. What this might mean for schools like Thetford Grammar remains to be seen.