Thousands gathered in London on Saturday for a rally against China’s planned “mega-embassy” project.
The demonstrators called out China’s human rights abuses against oppressed groups like the Uyghurs and Tibetans, and said the mega-embassy could become a headquarters for surveillance against dissidents abroad.
China already has a fully functioning embassy in London, but in 2018 the Chinese government purchased the Royal Mint Court, a historic structure that began as an abbey for an austere order of Catholic monks known as the Cistercians in the 14th Century.
As the name implies, the abbey became the primary location for the British Royal Mint from 1810 to 1975. The Royal Mint closed its last offices at the site in 2000, by which time the massive building had been developed into a combination of residential apartments and office suites.
The Chinese government decided its current embassy in London no longer reflected the growing wealth and power of China, so they bought the Royal Mint Court for somewhere north of $330 million U.S. dollars and announced an ambitious plan to renovate the structure into China’s largest embassy worldwide. The residential space in the property would become living quarters for about 225 embassy staffers.
China’s plans immediately proved controversial with both area residents and critics of the Chinese Communist regime. The first two renovation plans were rejected by the district’s government in 2022 and 2024, but the British national government intervened to keep the project alive, in part because the U.K. government wants to maintain good relations with China, and hopes to build its own impressive embassy in Beijing.
Chinese dictator Xi Jinping reportedly complained about the embassy project delays in a July phone call with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer. Chinese officials signaled the U.K.’s plans for rebuilding their embassy in Beijing will not move forward until China’s mega-embassy in London receives final approval.
Chinese officials also attempted to grease the wheels of the project by sending gifts to members of the district council in London, and by arranging for British companies that do business in China to lobby the U.K. government on behalf of the embassy project. Members of the council complained they were under heavy pressure from the city and national government to reverse their decision to block the Chinese project.
At the beginning of 2025, almost every official and procedural objection to the Chinese mega-embassy project had been withdrawn, except for security concerns about some British government telecommunications cables that pass beneath the Royal Mint Court, and concerns about ancient remains interred on the site of the long-abandoned abbey.
Human rights and privacy concerns about the Chinese Communist government remain very much unresolved, so large protests against the embassy project were held in February, and then again last weekend. Critics have cited the possibility of traffic jams from regular protests outside the embassy as a good reason to prevent the embassy project from moving forward.
“This is not just a building; this is an extension of the Chinese Communist Party’s power in the U.K.,” Chloe Cheung of the pro-democracy Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation said at the rally in February.
Cheung warned China could use the embassy for “control, fear, and silencing voices.” Many of the demonstrators in both February and March were, like Cheung herself, from dissident groups and persecuted minorities who have good reason to fear Beijing might spy on them, or target them for intimidation.
Organizers said Saturday’s protest had about 6,000 attendees, who brandished slogans such as, “No to China’s New Mega Embassy Spy Base in London,” and “China Cannot Be Trusted.” Winnie-the-Pooh was prominently featured in protest banners and pamphlets, alluding to Chinese censorship and the arrogance of Xi Jinping. Winnie-the-Pooh is banned in China because a decade-old meme compared the well-fed Chinese dictator to the honey-loving bear.
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