Starchitects, underground cables, human rights, espionage, national security and economic realpolitik: after several delays and postponements, the troubled story of the approval of the new Chinese super-embassy in the financial heart of the capital, practically in front of the vaguely Disney-like Tower Bridge and the Tower of London (Unesco site) has reached a turning point.
Both Security Minister Dan Jarvis and Housing Minister Steve Reed yesterday gave the OK to what is expected to be the largest embassy in Europe, even larger than the already colossal American one. Barring an unlikely but confirmed appeal by residents against the decision, the building, designed by David Chipperfield‘s studio, will go ahead: fears about China’s espionage use of the gigantic headquarters have been dispelled (so to speak) by the secret services and now Keir Starmer can fly to Beijing for that series of meetings with Xi Jinping which should revive Great Britain’s moribund economic growth.
The fact that China was declared a threat to national security only last December by Foreign Minister Yvette Cooper due to its cyber attacks, its brutal treatment of the Turkic Muslim Uighur minority and its “support for Russia in its war against Ukraine” does not seem to have hindered the process all that much. The same can be said of the long and worrying revelation by the Daily Telegraph about a week ago which warned of the substantial dangers of infiltrations and interceptions from the United Kingdom by Chinese spies under the guise of diplomatic officials.
IN 2022, THE PROJECT it had initially been rejected by the competent London Council, that of Tower Hamlets, for security reasons. When Beijing asked the question again in 2024, the government took the verdict on itself. Which was announced, in fact, by Reeds himself yesterday after three deadlines were missed, a clear indication of “decision-making suffering”.
According to the BBC, her predecessor, former deputy prime minister Angela Rayner, was supposed to issue an opinion by September 9, but had postponed her decision to receive further information from China regarding parts of the plan “classified for security reasons”.
THE CRITICISM were further supported by the Telegraph’s aforementioned revelations about a “hidden room” in the building. The newspaper has its eye on an uncensored version of the floor plan that says the room would be located not far from the tangle of fiber optic cables that transmit financial data to the City of London, as well as email and messaging traffic for millions of internet users. The hidden chamber itself would be equipped with air cooling systems, which could suggest “the installation of high-heat equipment such as advanced computers used for espionage”.
London, which in the meantime is waiting for its plan to renovate the British embassy in Beijing to be approved by the Chinese authorities, has therefore ignored the warnings of British and US politicians, local residents and pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong. And in the tumultuous structure in the process of rearranging the “geopolitical” balance, Starmer’s choice, already dangerously heterodox in the eyes of Washington in his defense of Greenland, risks creating a further fault line both within his party and with the White House and its partners, in resolute anti-Chinese warning in the Pacific through the Five Eyes alliance with Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
The decision is obviously also opposed by the opposition. The lead voice in the unanimous chorus of disapproval from the Conservatives is that of former Conservative Party leader Iain Duncan Smith, who sees Beijing as his bête noire and who has been sanctioned by China for repeatedly and harshly attacking its government. Duncan Smith said the move was “a terrible decision which ignores the appalling brutality of the Chinese Communist Party, which practices forced labor in its own country, spies on the UK and uses cyber attacks to damage our internal security”.
THE CHIPPERFIELD ONEwhich itself was the subject of multiple criticisms for accepting the commission, is a project spanning over two hectares. The Chinese government had purchased the land for £225 million in 2018. The most symbolic moment in post-war bilateral relations between the two countries was on 30 June/1 July 1997, when Hong Kong was officially “handed over” by the United Kingdom to the People’s Republic of China, marking the end of more than 150 years of British rule.
