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London – Despite fears of espionage and piracy by China, the British government on Tuesday gave the green light for China to build a massive new embassy in the heart of London. The designs for the mega-embassy will see it occupy an entire city block overlooking The Shard, Britain’s tallest building on the banks of the Thames.

It will be China’s largest embassy in Europe.

The U.K. government’s decision ended a saga that began in 2018 with Beijing’s nearly $350 million purchase of the former Royal Mint building, which used to produce British money and long served as a symbol of the U.K.’s economic power. Following the COVID pandemic, the UK government, amid multiple leadership changes, delayed final approval of the project as intelligence experts, members of the Chinese diaspora and future neighbors of the new embassy expressed concern and protested.

Sir Richard Dearlove, former head of Britain’s foreign intelligence service MI6, previously called on the government to reject China’s plans to build on the site, which sits atop buried cables transmitting sensitive financial and commercial data across the UK capital.

“Having a Chinese embassy on top of those cables, which could be attacked in extremis, is a major problem,” he told News themezone in early December, when the previous deadline for the government’s decision was pushed back to this month.

With a greater physical presence, Beijing could also employ more Chinese diplomatic staff, who would have freedom of movement in Britain thanks to diplomatic visas.

“If you have a very large embassy, ​​there could be a very large number and then they go to third countries, apparently on vacation or whatever, or to travel, and do things outside of the country that they are accredited to,” Dearlove said.

“They pretend to be ordinary diplomats, ordinary attachés, who are actually highly trained intelligence personnel,” he said.

UK officials respond to concerns about Chinese embassy

Responding to intelligence concerns, the heads of domestic intelligence agency MI5 and GCHQ, the intelligence, cyber and security agency, admitted on Tuesday that the risks to British national security linked to China’s new embassy could not be completely eliminated and implied that attempting to do so would be impossible.

“It would be irrational to reduce ’embassy-generated risk’ to zero when so many other threat vectors are so central to the national security risks we face in the current era,” GCHQ director Anne Keast-Butler and MI5 director-general Sir Ken McCallum said in a joint letter to government ministers. They also said the work to mitigate the risks had been “expert, professional and proportionate”.

Separately, for political reasons, the 240-page report from the UK Department of Housing, Communities and Local Government said that decisions on embassy approval should not be decided based on a country’s style of government.

“Planning law and national and development plan policies, and for its signatories, the Vienna Convention, which is based on reciprocity, are nationally neutral,” the report says. “It is not possible to discriminate a use based on the intended user. Otherwise, that could lead to an untenable situation where one nation’s embassy is allowed but another nation’s embassy is denied.”

“In this sense, any ethical or similar objection to the provision of an embassy for a specific country cannot be a material planning consideration,” the report says. “It would not be legal to deny permission simply because it would be for a Chinese embassy… The same would apply to any other specific country seeking the use of an embassy through the planning system.”

Chinese embassy approval sparks criticism

Despite the ministry’s report, British opposition parties criticized the embassy approval as an “act of cowardice” and Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s “biggest mistake yet.”

Anti-Beijing activists and dissident groups reacted with disappointment and anger. As China’s government cracked down on freedoms in Hong Kong, Tibet and China’s Muslim-majority Xinjiang region in the northwest, many sought refuge in the UK.

“It’s definitely deeply disappointing, but not surprising,” said Carmen Lau, a former Hong Kong politician who lives in self-exile in London.

He said he believed the UK approved the embassy so Starmer could keep his planned trip to Beijing later this month. The UK has also been trying to get approval for a new embassy in Beijing.

“But for me it is a disproportionate agreement,” Lau said. “It is not worth giving up China’s economic favor/return to the UK for too much national security concern.”

The UK has also become home to the world’s largest Hong Kong diaspora community: nearly 200,000 people are estimated to have fled in the past five years following the failed mass democracy protests in 2019.

“(The) Hong Kong diaspora would definitely be affected,” Lau said. “I have heard from people who are planning to move (into) secondary exile. The reason is that we have seen Chinese agents and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) itself become bolder in contacting us in the UK.”

“This embassy will be a daily reminder of China’s growing presence and growing influence over the UK government,” said Tenzin Rabga Tashi of the Tibetan advocacy group Free Tibet.

“It will be a reminder for members of my community to watch how they behave and not be so active in defense,” Tashi said. “You know, many of them have family inside Tibet, so they won’t be able to live comfortably in the UK knowing that China has more eyes on them, not just them, but their friends and families. This system of fear, this system of repression has increased in the UK and will continue to expand as long as China’s mega embassy is here.”

“I am shocked…absolutely furious,” said Rahima Mahmut, executive director of the human rights charity Stop Uyghur Genocide.

Human rights groups say that as of 2014, up to one million Uyghur Muslims were detained in Xinjiang and imprisoned. Those who could escaped and thousands settled in the United States.

“The approval of the mega embassy is deeply disheartening and feels like a profound betrayal,” Mahmut said.

After the British government gave its approval, the Chinese embassy in London said in a statement that it had noted that his application had been approved.