The Select Committee on the CCP said the site poses surveillance and interference risks to sensitive infrastructure, including London’s financial sector.
A U.S. House of Representatives committee has warned that China’s plan to build a giant embassy in London raises “significant security concerns.”
“The PRC’s mega-embassy in the UK raises significant security concerns: from interference and surveillance to risks for sensitive infrastructure like London’s financial services,” the Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party wrote on X on Feb. 19.
“We must work to urgently address this issue and work with our allies to protect national security.”
Mega-Embassy
The Chinese regime bought the Royal Mint Court, a historic site near the Tower of London, in 2018 for 255 million pounds ($326 million), with plans to turn it into a roughly 700,000-square-foot embassy.
It would be 10 times the size of China’s current embassy at London’s Portland Place and nearly twice the size of the Chinese Embassy in Washington.
According to the plan, the site, which has been vacant since 2013, will be partly renovated and partly re-built into a complex consisting of a main embassy building, a visa center, a “cultural exchange building,” and 225 flats for embassy personnel and visitors.
In January, British foreign and interior ministers indicated they would support China’s contested plans.
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Foreign Minister David Lammy and Interior Minister Yvette Cooper in a joint letter to the planning inquiry highlighted “the importance of countries having functioning diplomatic premises in each other’s capitals.”
British Prime Minister Sir Kier Starmer faced criticism over his meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping on Nov. 18, when footage showed him discussing the embassy but not demanding the release of Jimmy Lai, a pro-democracy media mogul and a British national jailed in Hong Kong.
Rejected
On Dec. 9, 2024, London’s Tower Hamlets council rejected Beijing’s plan for a large new embassy for a second time.
The borough’s Strategic Development Committee voted unanimously to reject the planning application, citing concerns over protest-related issues such as traffic congestion, impact on local tourism, and policing.
During the consultation process, locals objecting to the plan had said they were concerned about the embassy’s potential impact on local heritage sites and local communities and that the massive compound could be used as a “secret police station.“
The decision on the new application ultimately rests with the UK’s central government, which took over the application following Beijing’s request.
In a previous email to The Epoch Times, the Ministry of Housing, Communities, and Local Government said it’s not appropriate to comment while the case is being processed.
Threat
On Oct. 8, 2024, MI5 Director General Ken McCallum gave a rare public speech on the biggest national security threats to the UK.
Threats from autocratic regimes—namely Russia, Iran, and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)—have resulted in a 48 percent increase in state threat investigations, he said.
McCallum said China presents the most complex relationship of the three because while the UK recognizes the CCP as a threat, it wants to maintain business relations with China.
“The UK–China economic relationship supports UK growth, which underpins our security,” he said, according to the statement.
“There are also risks to be managed. The choices are complex, and it rightly falls to ministers to make the big strategic judgements on our relationship with China: where it’s in the UK’s interests to co-operate, and how we do so safely.”
MI5’s role in countering the CCP threat is in disrupting attempts to harm or coerce people, often of Chinese heritage; countering CCP-backed cyberattacks and mass attempts to steal information; and “tackling threats aimed at our democracy,” McCallum said.
Efforts to disrupt these operations need to be coupled with the education of businesses, universities, and other organizations as to how to engage with China while managing risks, he said.
The Epoch Times has contacted the Ministry of Housing, Communities, and Local Government and the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office for comment.
Lily Zhou, Cindy Li, Catherine Yang, and Reuters contributed to this report.
