China’s President Xi Jinping swears under oath after being re-elected as president for a third term (Image: AFP via Getty Images)
Allowing China to build its planned “super embassy” in London will turn the UK into a hub for Beijing’s intimidation tactics both here and across Europe, US politicians have warned.
The £350m, 600,000 sq ft embassy, which will include 230 flats for state employees and straddles crucial cable infrastructure, is set to occupy the former Royal Mint, opposite the Tower of London despite mounting security concerns.
Now the heads of two influential congressional bodies – John Moolenaar, chair of the US Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party and Christopher Smith, of the Congressional Executive Commission on China – have penned a stark letter to new UK Ambassador Peter Mandelson urging him to “discuss the matter” with during the PM’s visit to Washington.
The issue is expected to feature in today’s crunch talks between Starmer and US President .
In the letter viewed by the Express, the Congressmen warn that “conceding the Chinese Communist government such a prominent diplomatic foothold in the UK will only embolden its efforts to intimidate and harass UK citizens and dissidents and experts across Europe who oppose or criticise its policies.”
The result of approving the Embassy plans, they say, would see Beijing “get the largest embassy in Europe while thousands of political prisoners are detained in Hong Kong (including UK citizen Jimmy Lai), while the UK’s market is flooded with goods—from tinned tomatoes to solar panels—made with forced labor in China, and while diplomats associated with the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Offices spy on UK and EU citizens.”
They added: “At the same time, the CCP is committing atrocities against Uyghurs and Tibetans, uses torture against political prisoners, and employs almost daily military and ‘grey zone’ threats to intimidate the people of Taiwan—including cutting cables, a tactic we have seen employed in the Baltic as well.”
They warned of the CCP’s “systematic efforts to co-opt social and business elites to advance its political and economic goals through malign influence operations, which include subverting free speech and other democratic values and overlooking unfair trade practices to gain economic advantages, including the use of forced labor in prisons and in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.”
The Congressmen noted that Sir Keir had pledged to make Jimmy Lai’s release from Chinese detention a “UK government priority” and, citing the seriousness of the Special Relationship between the US and UK, urged the PM to “use his meeting with President Trump to coordinate efforts to gain Lai’s unconditional release.”
An artist’s impression of the proposed new Chinese Embassy in London. (Image: CBRE)
Congressman John Moolenaar issues stark warning (Image: Getty)
PM Sir Keir Starmer during a bilateral meeting with China’s Xi Jinping last year (Image: Getty Images)
Speaking last night Luke de Pulford, ceo of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC) said: “It’s a highly unusual step for foreign legislatures to make a comment about an embassy in another country from another nation, but this is borne of serious security concerns.
“It’s pretty hard to understand why the Chinese would need an embassy of that size with hundreds of employees if they were not intending to ramp up transnational repression of dissidents, which is particularly severe at the moment.”
Dissident Hong Kongers living in the UK are frequently targeted by Beijing with ominous threats, and many have bounties on their heads.
While most letters are sent by ardent nationalists there has been a recent shift, with letters now containing “very sensitive information that it would have been very hard for anybody other than authorities in Hong Kong to come by”, said de Pulford.
“The letters essentially say ‘we’ll give you money if you drag this person into the embassy grounds’, and people ask why we should be worried.“
He said the Labour Government U -turn over China, which had been viewed as a strategic threat by the last Government, has resulted in a series of decisions which are “not only at the expense of UK values, but also at the expense of UK national security”.
These include removing China from the list of Tier 1 threats which includes , Iran and North Korea, risking the security of the vital Diego Garcia military base with the Chagos Islands deal and placing the fate of the UK economy in the hands of an “unreliable partner”.
He added: “The real idiocy is that anybody who’s following economic trends in China can tell you that this idea that China is going to come to the rescue of the UK economy is ridiculous.
“Beijing’s direct investment has dropped off a cliff since 2017, and it doesn’t even honour its commitment.
“China has given reason to doubt whether even the £600 million which the UK has been promised, paltry as it is, will come good.”