The Starmer government has approved plans to build the largest Chinese embassy in Europe at the Royal Mint Court complex.
by Ruth Ingram
The British government has finally given the go-ahead for contentious plans to convert the former Mint in the heart of London into the largest Chinese embassy in Europe.
But residents of Royal Mint Court, now finding themselves tenants of the Chinese State, have instructed a KC to step up their fight against the Behemoth, raising more than £160,000 through crowdfunding and launching a judicial review to overturn the government’s verdict.
The U.K. government decision, fraught with controversy and delays, has played out over several years after the early 19th-century Royal Mint Court was sold to China for £255m in 2018. Its verdict has been met with shock, grief, fury, and disbelief by campaigners and politicians on all sides of the political spectrum who had hoped a last-minute reprieve might thwart the superpower’s proposals.
By allowing the Chinese mega-embassy to go ahead in the heart of London, the U.K. has been brought to a “very dangerous crossroads,” said life peer Lord David Alton, at a press conference to protest the British government’s green light.
“We are in a dangerous geopolitical moment,” he said, analogous to handing the Kremlin a set of keys to a new embassy in London during the heat of the Cold War.
In December 2022, unanimous opposition by Tower Hamlets council and objections by the Metropolitan police blocked the Chinese state, whose plans were thwarted when Mayor of London Sadiq Khan and U.K. government ministers refused to intervene.
But fast forward to a Labour victory in July 2024, and the embassy was back on the drawing board with a whisper in the ear of Keir Starmer by Xi Jinping during a congratulatory phone call on August 23, followed in November by a face-to-face nod over the matter during the Rio G20 summit. There were signs that a quid pro quo might be in the offing, with permission to renovate the British Embassy in Beijing and favorable trade deals if the Royal Mint Court could be signed off without a fuss.
Tower Hamlets was forced to back down in January 2025 after a surprising volte-face by the Metropolitan Police, which reversed its previous objections, and the embassy plans were suddenly back on the drawing board by February 2025.
The hard-fought campaign against the embassy, described variously as a base for espionage and by MPs in the House of Commons after the decision, as a “shameless capitulation to China,” was supported by politicians at the highest level, fearing permission would signal a public relations coup by the superpower. Shadow Minister Chris Philip regretted that the decision had “rewarded” China, and an exposé by the “Daily Telegraph” newspaper, recently citing 208 “secret rooms” and a “hidden chamber just one meter from critical data cables,” had been ignored. He slated U.K. government reassurances that national security would be a priority, claiming that China could “legally refuse to allow U.K. authorities to inspect the building during or after construction.” He criticized the government process for “lacking clarity” on the issue.
Lord Alton, addressing the press conference, criticized the British government’s naivety in failing to face up to Beijing’s ulterior motives on the world stage. China’s ideology was “ not about fair competition,” but “about subjugating the United States and reshaping the international order in the image of the CCP,” he said.
Referring to British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s imminent visit to Beijing on January 29, he said, “When Keir Starmer goes to Beijing with the title deeds of the mega embassy in his pocket I hope he will take with him copies of the Joint Committee on Human Rights report on slave labor and our supply chains and read those sections that deal with the use of Uyghur slave labor.”
He urged Keir Starmer to consult the government report on transnational repression and flag up the plight of more than eight exiled Hong Kongers who carried a Chinese government one million Hong Kong dollar bounty on their heads and lived in daily fear of surveillance by Beijing.
“And I hope that when he goes, he will raise the case of Jimmy Lai,” the British-Hong Kong media tycoon, currently imprisoned falsely on charges of sedition and violations of the National Security Law. “It is outrageous that any British prime minister should go to Beijing whilst a British citizen is incarcerated, languishing along with many pro democracy campaigners in jails in Hong Kong and in Mainland China.”
Uyghur Rahima Mahmut, Executive Director of Stop Uyghur Genocide, a U.K. based campaign group raising awareness about China’s atrocities against Uyghurs, said that she met the government’s decision with “fury and disappointment.”
“The approval of the mega embassy has left me utterly dismayed,” she said. “When I saw the breaking news, my heart sank. What I felt was a crushing mix of betrayal, fury, anxiety, and fear—emotions that are difficult to put into words, yet deeply personal and profoundly shared across our community.”
She referred to the Labour Party announcement from the Dispatch Box on April 22, 2021, that Uyghurs were being subject to genocide. “It is the same party, and the very same people now who are caving into China’s demand to build this monstrous embassy. I do not have words to express the grief of my people at being abandoned by those we had come to rely upon,” she said.
“While Uyghurs like me are enslaved, shut up in camps, our women forcibly sterilized, and silenced by threats against us and our families, the UK Government is inviting the criminals responsible to create a huge outpost for their criminal behavior here in London.”
“The decision sends a chilling message that genocide is negotiable.”
She accused the government of “normalizing good relations with a state committing genocide and crimes against humanity against defenseless peoples.” “All in exchange for trade and political convenience.”
Mark Nygate, treasurer of Royal Mint Court Residents Association, a member of one of the 100 families currently living inside the projected new embassy compound, was determined that the battle would go on. “This has been a long David and Goliath fight. We have fought this application since we learned that our homes had been sold to China without warning. We will fight it all the way.”
Hong Konger Christopher Mung, U.K.-based Hong Kong trade unionist, also with a million Hong Kong dollar bounty on his head, had been told by the Hong Kong city leader John Lee that he would be “pursued for life.” The sense of safety and security he once felt after arriving in the U.K. in 2021 was “rapidly fading”, he said.
“I am not alone in wondering if we ever truly escaped the long arm of the Chinese government. This is an opportunity to demonstrate the difference between the U.K. and China. We can challenge this decision through judicial review, and we hope that justice and truth will prevail.”
Ruth Ingram is a researcher who has written extensively for the Central Asia-Caucasus publication, Institute of War and Peace Reporting, the Guardian Weekly newspaper, The Diplomat, and other publications.
