cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/44806589
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The controversy began as soon as Beijing bought the site from real estate groups for £255 million (€292 million), after the then foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, approved the site's diplomatic use. Setting up an embassy at Royal Mint Court, the Conservative official wrote in a letter to his counterpart, Wang Yi, "will be bold expressions of the strength of UK-China bilateral relations," referring to the UK's parallel plan to renovate its embassy in Beijing.
"The Sunday Times revealed that Boris Johnson had entrusted Edward Lister, his right-hand man when he was mayor of London [2008-2016], with the task of negotiating the transfer on behalf of the Foreign Office, even though Mr. Lister had previously worked for the company chosen by Beijing to identify the embassy site," said Luke de Pulford, a human rights advocate, founder of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC) and one of the main opponents of the mega-embassy.
As is standard procedure, Beijing submitted its development plans to the relevant local authority: the Tower Hamlets borough council. But in 2022 ... the council unanimously rejected the project, citing its impact on the residents of about one hundred homes adjacent to the Royal Mint. "The council was concerned about risks to their safety and the traffic congestion that could be caused by demonstrations in front of the embassy," explained Conservative councilor Peter Golds. "It was a humiliation for Beijing, as the mega-embassy had become a major issue in the bilateral relationship," said de Pulford.
The project appeared to be dead. All the more so as the so-called "Golden Era" between the UK and China has come to an end. The Golden Era was launched by then Conservative prime minister David Cameron in the early 2010s, when the UK prioritized boosting trade with the world's second-largest economy. Now, repression is rampant in Hong Kong, with China reneging on its 1997 promise to preserve the rule of law on the archipelago when London handed over this former British territory.
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Starting in 2021, the UK offered visas to tens of thousands of Hong Kong residents fleeing repression, while successive Conservative prime ministers Liz Truss (2022) and Rishi Sunak (2022-2024) took a harder line against Beijing. Key figures in the Conservative Party (Tom Tugendhat, Iain Duncan Smith, Nusrat Ghani) were banned from entering China due to their criticism of the treatment of Uyghurs.
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Opponents have raised the alarm. In addition to the objections of Royal Mint residents, they put forward geopolitical arguments: "We could never imagine during the height of the Cold War that Margaret Thatcher would have allowed the Soviet Union to build the biggest embassy in Europe in London. It's a completely mad idea. My argument would be that China poses a much more acute threat than the Soviet Union ever did," said de Pulford.
Another issue is the size. "The bigger the building, the greater the risks of interference and influence operations," noted the activist, who pointed out the proximity of Royal Mint Court to the telecommunications cables connecting the City to Canary Wharf, the other major financial center in London.
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Hong Kong dissidents who have taken refuge in the UK also fear increased extraterritorial repression. "There have been a lot of examples before, where China used diplomatic premises to harass citizens or force people to travel back to China to face trials," said Lau. The young woman from Hong Kong is being hunted by authorities on the peninsula, who offered one million Hong Kong dollars (€109,088) to anyone who helped facilitate her arrest. "When I first arrived here, I felt safe. Not anymore: My neighbors received anonymous letters offering them money in exchange for information about me. When I go out, I am constantly looking over my shoulder," she said.
Hong Kong dissidents who sought refuge in the UK still remember the incident in Manchester in October 2022, when, during a peaceful protest outside the Chinese consulate, members of the consulate dragged a demonstrator into the compound and beat him. The crowd managed to rescue the young Hongkonger. The Manchester consul general and five diplomats were recalled by Beijing a few weeks later, before British police had the opportunity to question them. Lau also expressed concern about the many rooms planned for the basement of the mega-embassy. "We have proof that these rooms exist. Beijing refused to specify what they are for," said Golds.
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Announcing a green light [for China's 'mega'-embassy] could in any case trigger unrest even within the ranks of the Labour Party, following a series of warnings about the UK's vulnerability to Chinese espionage. In November, the domestic intelligence service (MI5) warned about recruiters attempting, via LinkedIn, to contact lawmakers at Westminster on behalf of the Chinese Ministry of State Security.
Downing Street has still not provided a clear explanation for why the espionage trial of former parliamentary aide Christopher Cash and academic Christopher Berry was canceled in September. At the time, the director of public prosecutions said that he had not received sufficient assurances from the government that China constituted a "threat to the national security of the UK" to be able to proceed with prosecuting the two men.
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The decision regarding the embassy "has become a flashpoint for the wider debate over how the UK should approach potential national security risks from China," noted the Chatham House think tank in a report dated December 3. However, British authorities' responses to Chinese espionage "appear to be largely reactive, driven by scandal and media scrutiny rather than sustained strategic planning," the authors of the report warned.