Should Whitehall say ‘mega no’ to China’s ‘mega embassy’ in London?
The Tangram | No 09.2025
This is the ninth Tangram from Observing China, where the leading China experts give a diverse range of succinct responses to key questions on the development of the People’s Republic of China (PRC).
Dissidents being plucked off the street and bundled into torture chambers onsite, and a confluence of cables transferring crucial data being tapped underneath an Eye of Sauron of omnipresent vigilance across London. These are the images conjured of Beijing’s potential new ‘mega embassy’ in London, if one is to believe much of the coverage of this topic by British media.
The request made by the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to upgrade its embassy has dominated news over the past year, particularly as Beijing has increased the pressure on His Majesty’s (HM) Government to approve it. Xi Jinping, General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), began amping this up when Sir Keir Starmer, Prime Minister, came into power last year. The current government has clarified in its manifesto that trade with the PRC is a must. Beijing is clearly using the approval of the ‘mega embassy’ as a prerequisite for the bilateral trade relationship to continue, or even to flourish.
But this saga has actually been going on for some years now. The PRC bought the site, Royal Mint Court, in 2018 – under the previous Conservative government. If the security concerns can be allayed, then what grounds can HM Government use to reject it?
In this Tangram, I asked seven experts to consider the veracity of these concerns and whether or not, in the end, Whitehall should approve the ‘mega embassy’.
Charles Parton OBE
Chief Adviser, China Observatory, Council on Geostrategy
HM Government’s handling of the new Chinese ‘mega embassy’ issue is puzzling. To this outsider, it seems simple. If, as reported, there are sensitive cables running from the financial district in the City, and if those cables cannot be rerouted, planning permission should be refused.
If such cabling does not exist, arguments for refusal are overwrought. The idea that the new embassy will be a bastion of espionage holds no water. The Ministry of State Security (MSS) does not run sensitive operations from embassies, because the security services monitor them and their staff. Agents are met either in the PRC or third countries. No doubt Chinese embassy staff do ‘targeting’, bringing to MSS attention people whom they might approach, but they can do this from any premises.
The basement of the new embassy will not be used as dungeons for holding opponents of the regime seized from the United Kingdom’s (UK) streets. The Chinese have not done this since 1896, when Qing authorities kidnapped Sun Yat-sen. In the unlikely event that they kidnapped someone today, they would surely use a safe house well away from the attention surrounding an embassy. As for blanks on the plans submitted by the PRC, surely in planning for a new embassy in Beijing, British authorities would not set out which rooms are to be used for sensitive purposes, such as communications, servers, housing political staff, safe speech rooms and so on?
Symbolically, a massive embassy squatting toadlike in a historical building in the heart of London is not a comfortable sight. However, the UK practises rule of law, and if there is no legal or security reason for withholding permission, so it must be.
So why this procrastination, particularly when a positive answer is likely to be followed by appeals, ensuring that nothing happens for years? Outsiders can only peer at this fog. But the temptation is to see within that mist a government which is scared to upset the Chinese by declaring openly that national security means a negative answer. The controversy over the new edifice is not edifying.
Senior Geopolitical Adviser, Business Finland, and International Fellow, Council on Geostrategy
Whitehall’s decision has been postponed repeatedly, drawing protests with warnings of ‘consequences’ from Beijing and raising the diplomatic stakes. Approving the project would signal openness to the PRC, but could raise national security risks.
On national security concerns, British and allied security services report a sharp rise in Chinese espionage targeting the political, economic and technological assets of free and open countries. MI5 has flagged growing ‘big three’ threats from the PRC, Russia and Iran, with a 35% jump in state-linked probes. Recent alerts detail Beijing-linked attempts to compromise Members of Parliament (MPs) and influence political life through blackmail and use of covert networks. Simultaneously, coordinated Chinese-Russian operations – from hybrid intrusions and disinformation campaigns – aim at destabilisation.
Prosecuting any criminal offences is difficult. Cases often falter on evidential difficulties based on political sensitivities, as seen with the collapse of the recent spying case relating to Beijing. Nevertheless, intelligence officials in free and open nations widely agree that the PRC and Russia are not only boosting espionage activities, but are actively targeting critical infrastructure, and ramping up cyber and human intelligence efforts against the UK and its allies and partners.
This is unfolding amid the two nations’ deeper intelligence entente since their 2022 ‘no-limits’ partnership. Intelligence cooperation has expanded across satellite reconnaissance, dual-use technology and influence operations fuelled by actors who seek to undermine the rules-based international order. While some argue that historic distrust limits the depth of cooperation, increasing evidence points the other way: Sergei Naryshkin, Director of the Foreign Intelligence Service of Russia, stated in June 2025 that Chinese-Russian intelligence ‘interaction is expanding year by year…in all areas’. Growing evidence of the PRC’s intelligence sharing with Russia on Ukrainian targets confirms deepened intelligence coordination. The result is a more hostile intelligence environment, in which both powers act jointly to promote a global order which undermines British interests and influence.
Approving the new embassy thus not only poses concrete security risks, but symbolically also feeds into the war on narratives, amplifying the idea that democracy is weak and has a propensity to sacrifice national security for economic gains. Foremost, however, it underlines Beijing’s own perception that, in the face of its geoeconomic might, it can sit back and let the dominoes fall.
Senior Vice President for National Security and Intelligence, Centre for the Study of the Presidency and Congress, and International Fellow, Council on Geostrategy
While the decision is ultimately the UK’s to make, a rejection of the PRC’s proposed ‘mega embassy’ would be well-received in Washington by Donald Trump, President of the United States (US). Trump has already indicated that he believes the centrally located embassy, which would become Beijing’s largest in Europe, represents a ‘national security risk’. Rejecting its construction would demonstrate to Washington that No. 10 takes the threat seriously, and will stand up to the PRC’s bullying in Beijing and intransigence in London.
The Trump administration views Beijing as its central strategic competitor, and is increasingly reorienting its defence and military apparatus towards containing and deterring the PRC in the Indo-Pacific. While the US believes that it is the primary – and only – country with the capacity to do so, it nonetheless expects alignment among its allies in resisting pressure (diplomatic, political, economic or otherwise) from Beijing.
Washington is undoubtedly aware of the high-profile collapse of an espionage case in London, which, to some, reflects poorly on HM Government’s legal ability to confront Beijing’s wide-ranging intelligence efforts – to say nothing of its seriousness about the threat. Many, especially within Congress, remain displeased with Britain’s decision to hand control of the British Indian Ocean Territory (including the strategically important Diego Garcia) to Mauritius. Washington will also recall the challenging efforts undertaken to extricate and prevent further penetration of British telecommunications networks by Huawei and ZTE.
Approval now, though temporarily delayed, would serve to resurrect these less-than-desirable memories of the UK’s complex and challenged relationship with the PRC, and would be seen as conceding to Beijing’s bullying and intransigence. It would also undermine some of the goodwill which the Prime Minister has worked assiduously to build with the President since his inauguration in January 2025. For Trump, the only thing worse than no deal is a bad deal, and the ‘mega embassy’ is very much a bad deal for Britain.
Research Assistant, Defence and Security Institute, University of Western Australia, and International Fellow, Council on Geostrategy
Attempting to define and conceptualise the challenge posed by the PRC to the UK has animated HM Government since the 2021 Integrated Review, with Sir Keir landing on the dictum that the two nations will ‘cooperate where we can, compete where we need to and challenge where we must’.
This is almost a carbon copy of Australia’s dictum under Anthony Albanese, Prime Minister of Australia, that Canberra ‘must cooperate where we can, disagree where we must, but engage in our national interest’. It is the differences in the last clause which the ongoing ‘mega embassy’ row highlights, with the proposed site having potential national security implications due to surveillance concerns.
Assuming these implications are indeed accurate, the proposed embassy should be rejected. This decision would satisfy both dictums. But fear of Beijing’s reaction seems to be driving Britain’s PRC policy as of late; Australia’s handling of the relationship should again be looked to for guidance.
The Albanese administration has demonstrated that a country at odds with the PRC in many respects can deepen relations while maintaining both face and security, as well as targeted national interests, such as a dynamic economy. Even though – after much hard work – the final remaining trade sanctions placed on Australia during the 2018-2022 administration of Scott Morrison were only lifted six months prior, Albanese remained stern in the face of threatened Chinese trade retaliation, affirming that he would maintain his position to force the sale of the Chinese-owned Port of Darwin.
Furthermore, just over half a year after a lengthy – and borderline decadent – state visit to the PRC, Albanese signed a geopolitically significant critical minerals deal with the US, which has its sights set squarely on the PRC and its hold over the refining and export of those minerals. Sure, this is a juggling act; however, it is one that is broadly working.
Australia may be more deft than the UK in managing the PRC, but it does not have more leverage. It may just have more guts. Policymaking under the assumption that sometimes the PRC’s bark is worse than its bite is not without risk, but it is a path which can lead to a more balanced relationship and less room for infringements on national security.
Australia under Albanese has demonstrated this in many cases. With Sir Keir already borrowing from Australian Labour on PRC policy, he may want to consider what Canberra’s blueprint for the ‘mega embassy’ would look like – not just Beijing’s vision and the threats which accompany it.
Freelance security and defence consultant
Beijing’s current administration is preparing for a new era of great power contest, with the scale of this proposal demonstrating this figuratively and literally. The PRC seems to be hedging that HM Government will capitulate on accepting heavily redacted plans or, if not, retaining such rejection for future retaliatory actions. However, at the moment, potential retaliation for standing firm on national security grounds is not the priority concern for Whitehall. The UK is being drawn into a position that it has to understand, process and respond to with measured – yet unwavering – certainty.
As a matter of diplomacy, it is entirely reasonable for Beijing to house a new embassy in London. It is less reasonable, however, to do so on its terms alone. Whitehall cannot accept a plan which does not legitimately address its concerns over espionage, influence and political harassment. As ever, the trading game here is reciprocity. What reassurances, or even terms of goodwill, are on the table?
If Beijing is not prepared, at the very least, to offer guarantees over concerns of rights of the Chinese diaspora (including Hong Kong citizens) and non-interference in sovereign affairs, then there is little to question here. But neither firm assurances nor revised embassy plans will overcome the momentum of Chinese manoeuvres.
Whitehall has to prepare both an outright ‘reject’ and a heavy ‘revise’ strategy. To do this, it must establish its non-negotiables across parties, and understand what Britain legitimately needs from the PRC – both now and going forward.
Adjunct Fellow, Council on Geostrategy, Richmond Fellow, Royal Navy, and former officer, British Army
HM Government’s decision on whether to approve the ‘mega embassy’ construction will prove a public test of the UK’s ‘progressive realist’ foreign policy, as well as exemplifying the UK-PRC relationship in microcosm.
Rejecting the proposal will likely lead to reciprocal action from the PRC regarding proposed repairs to the British Embassy in Beijing, as well as making future trade negotiations more difficult. Against this, the security concerns of a larger embassy, housing far greater espionage capabilities and personnel – especially one which is close to London’s financial heart – should be measured.
The ‘optics’ of the decision should also be considered: does the UK wish to allow the PRC, an authoritarian regime accused of significant human rights abuses and aggressive espionage practices, to build its largest embassy in Europe on the historic site of the British Royal Mint, a stone’s throw away from the equally historic Tower of London?
While the current government is somewhat hamstrung by the fact that the land was purchased by Beijing under a previous administration, the UK should look to turn this unhappy situation to its advantage. One boon of the consolidated embassy is that it would be easier for Britain to monitor the behaviour of the PRC. As a minimum, the UK should demand of Beijing the closure of all its other official properties in London, as well as full information on the ‘greyed-out’ areas of the proposed building plans, and retain the right to veto additional construction.
Another bold proposal would be to offer the PRC an alternative location – somewhere large enough but far less prominent or risky (and ideally where a large number of protesters can gather safely). While potentially expensive, some effective diplomacy may offer a solution in which the espionage threat and public upset are reduced, with a minimal loss of face for either side.
Policy researcher and MPhil graduate, University of Oxford
Whitehall should refuse consent for the ‘mega embassy’ unless it can verifiably eliminate the risk of transnational repression.
The proposed embassy would concentrate Chinese personnel and privilege in a fortified enclave, which could monitor, coerce and intimidate UK-based diaspora communities. Britain has already seen how Vienna Convention immunities and inviolability shield intimidation. Staff at the Manchester consulate, for example, dragged a protester into the compound and beat him, then fled to Beijing after it refused to waive their immunity.
The Manchester assault was not an aberration, but a warning that inviolable premises and diplomatic status have been repurposed to menace critics on British soil. UK authorities have also identified undeclared ‘police service stations’ in London and other British cities, used to monitor and harass expatriates.
The UK now hosts sizeable Hong Kong, Uyghur and mainland dissident communities, many of whom face bounties, threats against relatives in the PRC and organised surveillance by party-state proxies. A mega compound would amplify these activities – co-opting student and community groups, mobilising counter-protesters and normalising the party-state’s reach far beyond consular services. The Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament has described the PRC as one of the most flagrant perpetrators of transnational repression in Britain. New powers under the National Security Act 2023 and the Foreign Influence Registration Scheme exist, but enforcement remains blunt when operatives can retreat behind diplomatic privilege.
If ministers contemplate approval at all, safeguards should be non-negotiable. HM Government should require full, unredacted plans and intrusive security vetting; establish buffer zones to protect lawful protest; and mandate targeted monitoring of suspected operatives to ensure no officials stalk, harass or direct coercion on the UK’s streets. Anything less invites impunity.
Approval on standard planning grounds would signal tolerance of state-organised coercion in Britain. Beijing bears the burden of proof. In the absence of verifiable guarantees which eliminate capacity – not merely intent – to repress, Whitehall should reject the application, and record such a decision on the grounds of national security and civil liberties.
Grace Theodoulou – Policy Fellow, China Observatory
Email: grace@geostrategy.org.uk
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