The Chinese government has revived its efforts to build a massive embassy complex in the heart of London, The Telegraph reported on Saturday. Chinese officials reportedly hope that relations with the UK will improve following the election of Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
Described by The Telegraph as a “super embassy,” the planned compound would occupy an area of nearly six square kilometers on the site of Royal Mint Court, located near the iconic Tower of London.
The embassy complex is expected to be ten times larger than China’s current diplomatic hub in the Marylebone district of central London. It will consist of an embassy, offices, 225 homes, and a cultural exchange center, the newspaper reported, citing planning documents submitted to the Tower Hamlets Borough Council.
A spokesman for the council told The Telegraph that “the planning team are reviewing the application and public consultation has commenced. At this stage we do not have a target committee date.”
Beijing bought Royal Mint Court for £255 million ($324.6 million) in 2018, but its first application for planning permission was unanimously rejected by the council in 2022. Opponents of the plans, including local residents and some British MPs, argued that the embassy would attract anti-Chinese protesters and threaten public safety in the area.
At the time of the rejection, China was the UK’s third-largest trading partner. Diplomatic relations between London and Beijing, however, were deteriorating. Parliament passed a motion in 2021 condemning China’s treatment of its Uyghur Muslim minority as “genocide.” The motion was condemned by the Chinese Embassy in London as “an outrageous insult and affront to the Chinese people.”
Relations slid further after six Chinese diplomatic staff reportedly assaulted a Hong Kong independence demonstrator during a riot outside the Chinese consulate in Manchester in October 2022, two weeks before MI5 Director Ken McCallum accused China’s ruling Communist Party of posing “the most game-changing strategic challenge to the UK.”
Beijing resubmitted its embassy plans several weeks after last month’s general election, which was won in a landslide by the Labour Party.
According to British media reports, Foreign Secretary David Lammy plans to visit China in September, amid what the government has called an “audit” of its relations with the Asian superpower. Chinese officials see the trip as an opportunity to mend the two countries’ “bruised ties,” China’s Global Times reported on Wednesday.
Former Conservative Party leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith told The Telegraph that Beijing was likely waiting for Labour to take power, to see if the party “can be persuaded into giving them the embassy it wants.” However, it remains unclear whether Labour’s China policy will differ greatly from that of the Conservatives. Last month, former NATO chief George Robertson, tapped by Prime Minister Keir Starmer to review Britain’s defense policy, named China as a “deadly” threat to the UK.