The sheet of paper says “Wanted Person” at the top. Below is a photo of a young woman, a headshot that might have been taken in a studio. She looks directly at the camera, smiling with her teeth showing, and her dark, shoulder-length hair is neatly brushed.
“A praise of a million Hong Kong bucks” and a UK telephone range are written in purple at the bottom. To earn the money, approximately £95,000, there may be an easy guidance: “Provide information on this desired man or woman and the associated crime or take her to the Chinese embassy”.
I can see the woman in the picture status in front of me. When she sees the structure, she shakes. We are outside a massive construction that was the Royal Mint. China wants to flip it into a big embassy in London, replacing the a great deal smaller space it has had there on account that 1877. The new premises, opposite the Tower of London, are already being patrolled by Chinese security guards. Additionally, the building is surrounded with the aid of CCTV cameras. “I’ve by no means been this close,” admits Carmen Lau.
Carmen, who’s 30, fled Hong Kong in 2021 as seasoned democracy activists inside the territory have been arrested.
She argues that the UK ought to now not to allow the “authoritarian regime” of China to have its new embassy in the sort of massive location. One of her fears is that China, with one of these big embassies, may want to harass political fighters and could even hold them in the building.
Some dissidents are also involved approximately the opportunity of espionage from the website’s proximity to London’s economic district. Then there is the opposition from residents who say it might pose a safety risk to them.
The plans had formerly been rejected by means of the local council, but the decision now lies with the authorities, and senior ministers have signalled they’re in favour if minor adjustments are made to the plan.
With a total area of 20,000 square meters, the proposed place would be Europe’s largest embassy. But wouldn’t it additionally, in reality, convey the risks that its opponents worry about?
The biggest embassy in Europe
Carmen fled to London but believes she has continued to be targeted
In 2018, China paid £255 million to acquire the antique Royal Mint Court. The location has layer upon layer of records: throughout the road is the Tower, components of which were built by William the Conqueror. For centuries, kings and queens lived there.
The plan itself involves a cultural centre and housing for two hundred bodies of workers; however, within the basement, behind safety doors, there are also rooms without an identified use in the plans.
Carmen asserts, “It’s clean for me to assume what might happen if I were taken to the Chinese embassy.” A seasoned democracy protester from Hong Kong was dragged into the grounds of the Chinese consulate in Manchester in 2022 and overwhelmed there. To store him, close by British police crossed the border. Back in 2019, mass protests had erupted in Hong Kong, induced by the authorities’ attempt and pass a new law bearing in mind Hong Kong citizens to be extradited to China.
China’s reaction mandated a law that pressured all elected officials in Hong Kong, along with Carmen, who turned into then became a district councillor, to take an oath of loyalty to China. Instead, Carmen resigned. She asserts that newshounds for the kingdom-run media in China commenced following her. An allegation that she and her colleagues had held events in their council offices was posted on the front page of the Beijing-based Ta Kung Pao newspaper.
She says, “You are acquainted with the regime’s techniques.” “They had been trying to bother you and had been following you. My coworkers and friends were being detained. Carmen fled to London but believes that she has endured to be centered.
She was charged with “incitement to secession and collusion with a foreign united states or with external elements to endanger countrywide protection” in Hong Kong arrest warrants. Following that, a bounty letter was sent to 1/2 a dozen of her friends from Hong Kong. She asserts, “The regime simply tries to put off any feasible activists abroad.” Steve Tsang, a political scientist and historian who is director of the SOAS China Institute, says he can see why human beings from Hong Kong, or surely other backgrounds, may be uncomfortable with the new embassy.
“The Chinese authorities do not have a report of kidnapping human beings and retaining them in their embassy compounds due to the fact 1949,” he asserts. However, he asserts that a portion of the group of workers at the embassy could be responsible for keeping an eye on Chinese students and dissidents in the UK and would also target British residents with impact—including scientists, businesspeople, and others—that allows you to develop China’s pastimes. The Chinese embassy informed the Expressepaper it “is committed to selling know-how and the friendship among the Chinese and British peoples and the development of at the same time useful cooperation among the two nations. Building a brand new embassy would assist us in doing these items better.
Warnings about espionage
Another concern expressed with the aid of fighters is that the Royal Mint Court web page might make it possible for China to gain access to sensitive statistics carried by fiber optic cables utilized by corporations inside the City of London and consequently penetrate the financial system of the United Kingdom. The website became stressed immediately into the United Kingdom’s monetary infrastructure because it once housed Barclays Bank’s buying and selling floor. Since 1985, a tunnel inside the place has delivered fiber optic cables serving the masses of City organizations beneath the Thames. The Wapping Telephone Exchange, which serves the City of London, is a five-story brick building inside the Court’s grounds.
An optoelectronics researcher at Southampton University, Prof. Periklis Petropoulos, claims that having direct get right of entry to to a functioning phone exchange could allow individuals to acquire facts. This has all precipitated warnings approximately the ability of espionage, including from Conservative frontbencher Kevin Hollinrake, as well as senior Republicans in the US.
I changed into informed by way of an legit with protection knowledge from the administration of former US President Joe Biden that it’s totally feasible that cables can be tapped with devices that could seize data that was passing through them, and that this will be almost impossible to locate. He announces, “Anything up to a half-mile from the embassy would be susceptible.”
He argues, however, that China won’t be willing to achieve this because of its different hacking methods. “Anti-China forces are using security risks as an excuse to intervene with the British government’s consideration over this planning software,” the Chinese embassy said concerning these concerns. “This is a despicable circulate that might not work, and it may not be popular.”
What the neighbours think
At the return of the Royal Mint Court is a row of Nineteen Eighties-built residences. Mark Nygate has lived right here for more than two decades. He moves his hand across the low garden wall. He states, “Embassy group of workers will stay there and neglect us.” “We don’t want [the embassy] there because of demonstrations, safety dangers, and our privacy,” the statement reads. Opponents of the embassy – Hong Kongers, Tibetans, Uighurs, and competing politicians – have already staged protests involving up to 6,000 human beings.
Mostly, although he fears an assault on the embassy, that might harm him and his neighbours.
However, Tony Travers, a visiting professor in the LSE Department of Government who lives close to the cutting-edge embassy, is skeptical that the brand new buddies will interact in these types of protests if the relocation proceeds. “I’m now not aware of any evidence that there are everyday protests that block the street out of doors, the current Chinese embassy… It stands to reason that there are much larger protests outside several different nations’ embassies and excessive commissions,” the author asserts. The proposed development might “significantly enhance the encircling environment and convey benefits to the local community and the district,” consistent with the Chinese embassy in London.
When President Xi raised the issue
China’s first planning software to develop the website was rejected with the aid of Tower Hamlets council in 2022 over protection and safety concerns, and fears that protests and security features could damage tourism. Rather than amend the plan or appeal, China waited, then resubmitted an identical software in August 2024, one month after Labour came to power. Sir Keir Starmer, known as Chinese President Xi Jinping, on August 23 for his or her first address. After that, Sir Keir confirmed that Xi had raised the embassy issue. After being urged to accomplish that by means of Foreign Secretary David Lammy, Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner has exercised her authority to cast off the difficulty from the council’s manipulate due to the fact then. Following Rishi Sunak’s announcement in 2022 that the so-referred to as “golden technology” of UK-China family members has over, that is in the context of a government’s authorities to have interaction with China. For his component, Prof Travers believes that politics is concerned with making plans and decisions. He argues that “the Secretary of State should make the decision based on the documentation that is in front of them and the regulations surrounding and affecting the problem.” “However, to count on that politics no longer plays a function would be naive.”
‘Kissing up to China’
Lord Peter Ricketts, a former diplomat who chaired the United Kingdom’s National Security Council, advising prime ministers on worldwide threats, stresses that the U. S relationship with China is complex.
A National Security Strategy posted in June laid out the conflicting priorities within the authorities’ technique, highlighting its desire to apply the connection to reinforce the United Kingdom’s financial system but also, in all likelihood, “persisted anxiety” over human rights and cybersecurity.
But is that duality of reaping the enterprise advantages while pushing at the human rights transgressions, even possible?
Lord Ricketts asserts, “It is sincerely an adversary in a few areas, which attempts to thieve our highbrow property or suborn our residents.” “(But) it’s miles an industrial market, a vital one for us, and it’s a player inside the big worldwide problems like climate and health.
“We should be able to treat China in all those methods simultaneously.” He says that the selection made with the aid of the embassy gets to the coronary heart of this. “There are acute dilemmas, and there are choices to be made, whether or not to privilege the 30, forty, or 50-year dating with China, which an embassy, I guess, might symbolise.
“Or whether to give precedence to the quick-term safety threats, which are confident actual as well.”
Image produced by the architects of the proposed Cultural Exchange building at the new embassy
The Conservative MP Sir Iain Duncan Smith is convinced that giving the go-ahead for the new embassy might be a large mistake. “They suppose that the only manner they will get boom is by way of kissing up to China and getting them to invest,” he tells me.
Prof. Tsang, however, believes that notwithstanding the safety worries, having a single large embassy ought to make it less difficult to display what Chinese officials are doing within the UK. He argues that “they’re for the time being all around the vicinity in London, you cannot virtually preserve an eye fixed on them,” so “allowing the Chinese to put their personnel on one website is most efficient.” He isn’t always convinced that the embassy’s approval or rejection will affect trade and commercial enterprise.
“The Chinese are the maximum pragmatic humans there are. “They are not going to all at once say that due to the fact you denied us the embassy, we are not promoting our satisfactory electric powered motors to you,” he asserts. But, similarly, “they’re now not going to drastically increase Chinese investments within the UK due to the fact they have got the new embassy compound.”
Angela Rayner’s choice can also depend on how seriously she takes the warnings that China can also listen in on the United Kingdom’s banks if she additionally believes that. It’s feasible that the reason she turns down the embassy is that she believes it poses a real threat. Credits for the top pictures visit Reuters, Richard Baker, Getty Images, SOPA Images, and EPA -EFE/REX/Shutterstock. Expressepaper InDepth is the house on the internet site and app for excellent evaluation, with fresh perspectives that challenge assumptions and deep reporting on the most important issues of the day. Additionally, we feature content from iPlayer and BBC Sounds that provokes thought. By clicking the button to the right, you may allow us to know what you think about the InDepth section.