Iain Duncan Smith, a Conservative, is a member of the British Parliament.
The British government’s approval on Tuesday of a huge new Chinese Embassy at the site of the former Royal Mint, opposite the Tower of London, is a decision that betrays Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s weakness.
Over the past year and a half, the government has insisted that Britain’s security services can cope with the presence of a super-embassy (at 215,278 square feet, the largest in Europe) serving the interests of the Chinese Communist Party. Yet, on the very day the planning permission was announced, Ken McCallum, director general of the domestic security service MI5, and Anne Keast-Butler, head of the electronic intelligence agency GCHQ, signed a joint letter to ministers warning that “it is not realistic to expect to be able wholly to eliminate” security threats posed by the embassy.
Their caution is not surprising. Aside from the obvious increase in surveillance risks from such a mega-complex in the heart of London, there is the added concern that the Chinese government will be better able to menace Chinese dissidents. This is the same Communist government that trashed the Sino-British agreement transferring Hong Kong to China’s rule in 1997 and imposed a draconian national security law in 2020. It was under this law that the Chinese government began to arrest and persecute thousands of peaceful democracy campaigners. More than 100,000 fled to Britain. Then there is the heroic publisher and democracy advocate Jimmy Lai, a British citizen imprisoned by the CCP after years of harrowing intimidation.
As it does elsewhere in the world, the Chinese government operates “police stations” in Britain for interrogating and menacing those who have fled its rule, to coerce them to return to Hong Kong. The CCP has also offered bounties, the equivalent of $128,000, for information leading to the capture of Hong Kong dissidents in Britain and other countries.
When these tactics fail, the Chinese government has turned to violence. In late 2022, Bob Chan, a Hong Kong dissident who had fled to Britain, was dragged into the Chinese Consulate in Manchester and beaten. His attackers reportedly included the consul general.
What makes this Labour government’s decision on the Chinese Embassy so appalling is Beijing’s oft-stated and clear threat to Britain, to our allies and to our very way of life in the free world. It was only a few months ago that a trio of dictators, Xi Jinping side by side with Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un, declared the arrival of a new world order. Not one, I would wager, of democracy, equality before the law and freedom.
Russia almost certainly would not have been able to wage its war on Ukraine without China’s support, militarily, financially and through its purchase of sanctioned oil. It is therefore astonishing that Beijing, the key organizer of this axis of totalitarian states (Iran, China, North Korea and Russia), should be allowed to occupy such a prominent site in a key part of London. It is hard to imagine any British government having offered the Soviet Union a site with such a level of access during the Cold War.
It is also unbelievable that on the day the housing secretary, Steve Reed, released his grant letter giving China planning permission, he included a weak statement saying strategically vital telecommunications cables — which run right by the super-embassy site and have caused deep concern from many British allies — should not present a problem as long as the embassy is used in a lawful way.
Really? How could he not notice that China actively conducts unlawful espionage in Britain directed at our institutions, intelligence services and Parliament — as well as individuals, including myself, who have been sanctioned for criticizing the CCP over human rights abuses?
Small wonder that the 2023 parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee report concluded that China has been able “to successfully penetrate every sector of the UK’s economy.” This embassy decision will add massively to that vulnerability. As if that weren’t enough, Starmer is trying to hand over the Chagos Islands, which include a vital U.K./U.S. joint military base on Diego Garcia, to Mauritius. China, a friend of Mauritius, must be smacking its lips at such weakness.
All this shows, sadly, at a time when we should be building our defenses against the threat of totalitarian states, our prime minister has decided to throw the nation into a deeper embrace of China’s dictatorial and brutal regime.
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