China’s new mega-embassy plan at Royal Mint Court stirs controversy in the UK over secrecy, security threats, protests, heritage concerns, and influence on government decisions.
LONDON: The new Chinese Embassy is causing quite a stir in London. The new super-Embassy in the historically significant Royal Mint Court has been many years in the pipeline, several years were below the radar of public and seemingly parliamentary scrutiny. The CCP would love to have this prestigious site as their flagship Embassy and the irony that Britain’s mighty coin producer might now become CCP central in UK seems to be lost on the Labour Party.
The chicanery of the deal goes back to 1994 when G Soros Realty Investors, acquired £1.34 million British Land shares at 298p from a Quantum Fund holding. The Quantum Fund, co-founded by George Soros in 1973, is one of the most successful hedge funds in history, known for its high-yield returns and significant impact on global finance. Documents issued by British Land apparently did not disclose this, but did reveal that Mr John Ritblat, Honorary President of British Land, received 2 million shares at cost from the Quantum Fund. In 1998, in a convoluted deal, one of George Soros’s Quantum hedge funds from the British Virgin Islands placed £127m into Delancey Estates. Then in June 2010 the freehold of the iconic site was acquired on an off-market basis by clients of Delancey from the Crown Estate, the Crown acquired the Royal Mint Court in 1539 following the dissolution of the monasteries. Delancey is a UK-based real estate asset management and advisory firm, investing in real estate investments, developments and related businesses on behalf of global institutions. In April 2015, a joint venture was finalised with the LRC Group, managements specialists of commercial and residential assets. Planning permission was secured by the joint venture from Tower Hamlets in February 2017, for a comprehensive, architecturally ambitious refurbishment and part redevelopment for the Grade II-listed building to be refurbished and the site redeveloped into an office, shopping and leisure complex. Then in May 2018 Delancey Estates and the LRC Group sold the freehold site to the People’s Republic of China for conversion into their new London Embassy, destined to be the largest embassy in Europe, with accommodation for at least 230 CCP employees. At the time the Department for Communities and Local Government estimated City of London development land prices to be around £100M per hectare, and the site is 5.4 acres, just over two hectares, hence it is likely the price was over £255million.
May 2018 Theresa May was UK PM, Philip Hammond was Chancellor of the Exchequer and Boris Johnson was Foreign Secretary. At the time there was controversy as Sir Edward Lister, now Lord Udny-Lister, was Johnson’s strategy advisor in the FCDO whilst simultaneously being involved with CBRE, the US firm who were appointed by the CCP to identity a suitable site for the new Embassy, and Lister was also a paid adviser to Delancey. Both companies deny that Lister had any involvement in the transaction. The UK government insisted everything was conducted according to the rules but Liu Xiaoming the then Chinese Ambassador congratulated Lister for his effort in securing the deal. The 2022 planning application for the Embassy development was rejected by Tower Hamlets Council but it was resubmitted in January 2025, after David Lammy’s October 2024 visit to Beijing and in advance of the Chancellor’s Rachel Reeves visit to China.
Ever since the acquisition there have been objections, by residents, peers, human rights activists, ministers, British intelligence agencies, cyber security experts and the Metropolitan Police. Leaseholders of residents with homes on the site are enraged the Government and Tower Hamlets have not engaged in consultation with them or the wider public before completing the sale of the Royal Mint site. The absence of any communication or reports in the media give the impression that the decision to build a Chinese Embassy and Ambassador’s residence was approved before a formal planning application had been submitted. The US Congressional Committee on China has also criticised the proposals on security grounds. This week The Telegraph reported Tory concerns raised by Innovate UK, the Government’s experts on cyber-physical infrastructure, quoting fears that the Chinese Embassy could wiretap the sensitive cabling that feeds the City of London, and possibly gain access to the three huge data centres nearby. Kevin Hollinrake MP said “the Labour government in their desperate attempt to woo the Chinese government, are opening up the City of London to Chinese hackers and spies.”.
The decision on the David Chipperfield Architect’s scheme will now be taken by the Housing and Communities Secretary/Deputy PM Angela Rayner, and not the Greater London Authority who had warned in a letter to Tower Hamlets Council that the proposals breached security and heritage concerns of London planning policy. The Royal Mint Court is above a medieval Cistercian Abbey, which has cemetery found to contain nearly a thousand bodies killed by the C14th bubonic plague “the Black Death”. David Lammy, Foreign Secretary, and Yvette Cooper, Home Secretary, have formally supported the development. Simon Bell, representing the Royal Mint Court Residents Association, said the Home Office and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office had “sought to influence” independent public bodies which had objected to the proposals, including the Metropolitan Police.
On 9 February around 4000 protesters demonstrated outside Royal Mint Court, including 28 diasporic groups from Hong Kong, Tibet, Taiwan, Uighur Muslims, Chinese Dissidents, and some resident organisations; they were addressed by former Security Minister Tom Tugendhat, Labour MP Blair McDougall, and Shadow Justice Secretary Robert Jenrick. In December, the Metropolitan Police objected to the development on the basis there is not enough space for demonstrations at the site and that policing protests would be difficult and disproportionately expensive, given the lack of space outside Royal Mint Court, and proximity to major surrounding roads; they were correct, the protest blocked traffic in every direction to and from Tower Bridge Junction.
In January 2025 the Foreign and Home Secretaries notified the planning inspectorate that Met’s objection had been withdrawn, in a highly unusual intervention. Tower Hamlets Council, also opposed to the development in December, subsequently dropped their objection. The Sunday Times reported the basis for the change in the Met’s position appears to have been a 2022 “pedestrian comfort assessment” produced by the applicant (the Chinese Embassy). It is unclear why this older document did not have a bearing on the Met’s December 2024 objection, the document claims that over 2,000 people can safely protest at the site; these claims are rejected by residents and activists.
A second protest was held on 15 March, the protest was partly a response to the position of the Metropolitan Police who withdrew their objection in January 2025. The protest was addressed by senior UK Parliamentarians, including Shadow Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Kevin Hollinrake MP, Sir Iain Duncan Smith MP, Liberal Democrat MP Luke Taylor, and Lord Bethell, and Sir Geoffrey Nice KC.
The Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China and founder Luke de Pulford have been campaigning against the challenges posed by the People’s Republic of China under the rule of the Chinese Communist Party, an authoritarian regime that seeks to reshape the global order on its own terms; amongst many concerns de Pulford is worried the Embassy development will increase transnational repression.
During the G20 summit in Rio in 2024 Keir Starmer responded to President Xi’s lobbying about the stalled planning for Royal Mint Court, Sir Keith responded that the government had called in the application and the government were following the legal process and timeline.
It is predicted that Keir Starmer may visit Beijing this summer, will he be weighing up closer ties with Beijing versus the special relationship with Washington.