China wants a ‘super-embassy’ in London — sparking anger and spying fears
China’s proposal for a large embassy by the Tower of London, near critical communications cables, has led to espionage concerns. China describes the claims as “slander.”
It’s been home to a black death burial ground, monastery and Royal Navy shipyard and was the epicenter of coin production as the Royal Mint. But a prime piece of London real estate could be about to face its starkest transformation yet — into a massive Chinese diplomatic site dubbed a “super-embassy” by British media.
Next month the British government is due to decide whether to grant the Chinese government permission to create an Embassy House and Cultural Exchange Building on the site of Royal Mint Court.
The proposed development measures more than 610,000 square feet — nearly 10 times the size of China’s current main embassy building and larger than the 518,050-square-foot U.S. Embassy that opened in London in January 2018. It also contains plans for 225 residences, a visa processing center and a “heritage interpretation pavilion,” according to plans submitted to the local council, Tower Hamlets.
In Britain, planning permissions are typically granted by local councils, determined by factors including environmental and transport considerations. But a whole host of other factors — the sheer size of the proposed embassy, its location near landmark sites including the Tower of London and City of London, fears about Chinese government surveillance, and Britain’s complex relationship with China — have catapulted the decision into the upper echelons of government and attracted significant protests and controversy.
Even some U.S. lawmakers have weighed in, with two warning British officials in February that granting permission to develop the site would “embolden [China’s] efforts to intimidate and harass UK citizens and dissidents and experts across Europe,” or describing “significant security concerns” over the site’s proximity to “sensitive infrastructure like London’s financial services.”
“The arguments are not China shouldn’t have an embassy. The arguments are China should not be allowed to have this embassy in this place,” Luke de Pulford, founder and executive director of Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, an international group that describes itself as focused on demanding accountability from China, said in an interview.
The plans were initially rejected by the local council in 2022, citing policing, tourism and traffic concerns. China resubmitted identical plans in July 2024, however, after general elections ousted the Conservative government and ushered in Labour’s Keir Starmer as prime minister.
Starmer spoke with Chinese President Xi Jinping in August 2024, where Xi raised the issue of the embassy, and in October that year Starmer’s government announced it would make the final decision on permission — effectively taking it out of the hands of local planners — in a move interpreted by many as a sign the government wanted to approve the project.
Tower Hamlets Council announced in December that it would have refused the plans a second time, had the government not stepped in.
China’s embassy in Britain wrote in a statement that plans for the site followed local regulations and “comply with international diplomatic practice” and that “it is an international obligation of the host country to provide support and facilitation for the construction of diplomatic premises.”
Some British lawmakers have expressed worry, however, that the strategic location between two of London’s financial hubs could allow China to hack subterranean cables. China has been accused of malicious cyber-activities, and last month, Britain issued an advisory along with the United States, its counterpart in the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing relationship, about a Chinese government hacking campaign that targeted at least 200 U.S. organizations and 80 countries.
Other critics have pointed to the placing of bounties on the heads of overseas dissidents, a 2022 incident in which a protester was dragged into the Chinese Consulate grounds in Manchester, England, and assaulted, and the fact that large swaths of the planning documents have been “redacted for security reasons,” triggering fears those could be rooms used to detain and interrogate activists. Diplomatic rules mean that embassy territory is regarded as sovereign soil — so local police cannot enter without permission.
China has described claims that the new embassy poses security risks to Britain as “completely groundless and malicious slander,” while planning consultants working for China have argued that the application for the U.S. Embassy in London also “did not disclose details of internal layouts.”
De Pulford argued that comparisons between China’s proposed development and the U.S. Embassy are misleading, saying China is an “adversary state” that is not disclosing “what it wants to do in whole massive sections of their embassy. This is obviously unacceptable.”
De Pulford has been working to advise residents of the Royal Mint Court Residents Association, a group of residents and business owners of 100 leasehold apartments, a day care and hair salon on the site, which was bought by the Chinese government in 2018. He said they feel trapped in a “David and Goliath” battle.
Supporters of the site have cited the restoration of historic buildings, improved embassy services and better security as reasons to allow the development, according to the local council.
Those targeted by Chinese authorities say approving such a “glorified monument” of Chinese state power in the heart of London sends the wrong signal, including Simon Cheng, the founder and director of Hongkongers in Britain, a community group supporting Hong Kong residents who moved to Britain following China’s crackdown on widespread pro-democracy protests in 2019.
Chinese state security officials detained Cheng for 15 days in August 2019 while he was working for the British Consulate in Hong Kong. He told The Washington Post that he was removed from a train, interrogated about his political activities and held in various stress positions. He was accused of spying and inciting pro-democracy protests on behalf of the British government. He later moved to Britain, where he was granted asylum, and had a $128,000 bounty placed on his head by Hong Kong police under Beijing’s controversial national security law.
Allowing China to have such a large embassy and staff with diplomatic privileges could mean they feel “above the U.K. law” in terms of tracking dissidents on British soil, or potentially detaining and interrogating them on the site, Cheng said. In a letter to the British government dated Aug. 20, Cheng and other activists wrote, “Our concerns are not merely speculative but are substantiated by consistent reports of Chinese consular officers disregarding the rule of law in host states.”
Steve Tsang, director of the China Institute at London’s School of Oriental and African Studies, said the focus on the building itself was misguided. He pointed out that “every embassy has secure rooms which are for very secure communications” and that fears over sensitive cables underneath the site could be resolved during the planning process.
Tsang said opposition to China’s proposal boils down to two groups: those who believe China is a “maligned, malevolent, ill-intentioned force toward the U.K.” and recent immigrants from Hong Kong who have “very understandable reasons to be very concerned about the kind of extraterritorial reach of Chinese law.”
He considered the bigger concern, however, to be the “enormous” number of Chinese Embassy staff working in various locations across London.
“A building doesn’t go out and spy and a building doesn’t go out and infiltrate society. People do that,” he said. “If MI5 wants to monitor the Chinese Embassy staff, it’s arguably easier if they are mostly located in the same physical locality than if they are being scattered around London. And if we have a problem with embassy staff doing things which are problematic, then we need to deal with that as an issue and not simply deny them a site.”
Britain also faces political pressure, he added, because there is “zero chance” Beijing will support its plans to expand its own embassy in Beijing if the London site is not approved.