'The Government needs to stop caving in to China', Benedict Rogers

For a government to ignore the unanimous will of an elected local council is a snub to the autonomy of local government, shows disdain for the will of the people and represents an insult to democracy.

For a government to ignore the advice of its intelligence agencies represents a threat to national security.

And for a government to kowtow to an authoritarian regime with little benefit in return sends an appalling message about its weakness when it comes to defending our values.

The Foreign Secretary David Lammy and the Home Secretary Yvette Cooper did all three when they appeared to override the decision of Tower Hamlets Council, ignore the will of the residents of the borough and reject the advice of the intelligence agencies by intervening on China’s planning application for an enormous new London embassy in the old Royal Mint, near the Tower of London.

In a joint letter to the Planning Inspectorate for England, Lammy and Cooper signalled their support for China’s plans for a new mega-embassy.

Their intervention came just days after the Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves returned from a trade mission to Beijing and Shanghai.

Let’s address the new embassy plans first, and then come to the wider question of this Government’s China policy.

If planning permission is approved, the new embassy will be China’s largest in Europe. 

As Tower Hamlets Councillor Peter Golds said, it will be ‘a centre of potential disinformation located not only on a world heritage site but adjacent to the City of London, a world financial centre’.

Evidence of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s campaign of espionage, influence, infiltration and intimidation in this country has mounted in recent years. 

Beijing’s agents have reportedly infiltrated and hacked Parliament, sanctioned parliamentarians, launched cyber-attacks on the Ministry of Defence, the Electoral Commission and other key sensitive institutions and placed bounties on the heads of exiled Hong Kong activists living in the UK and around the world. 

In a small way, I have experienced this first-hand, having received dozens of anonymous, threatening letters at my home address, stamped and post-marked from Hong Kong. My neighbours in the London suburb where I live, and my mother who lives in an entirely different part of the country, have received similar letters, urging them to watch me and tell me to ‘shut up’.

Far more seriously, in October 2022 peaceful Hong Kong demonstrators were assaulted outside the Chinese consulate by masked figures who dragged one young man, Bob Chan, onto the grounds of the consulate. The Consul-General at the time, Zheng Xiyuan, was filmed apparently pulling a protester’s hair. He responded by claiming it was his ‘duty’.

The proposed new London embassy is at a major, iconic, arterial junction between Tower Hill and Tower Bridge, where demonstrations would be difficult, dangerous and disruptive to London’s traffic.

That is one of the reasons Tower Hamlets Council twice unanimously rejected the planning application, and why until recently the Metropolitan Police advised against it. Lammy and Cooper claim the Met has changed its view – and we have a right to ask why?

The CCP’s appalling human rights record – one of the worst in the world – understandably attracts regular protests. And rightly so.

Uyghurs demonstrate against the genocide and slave labour they are facing in China’s Xinjiang region – a genocide which Lammy promised to recognise, a promise he has backtracked on in government.

Tibetans protest against the atrocities in Tibet under CCP rule, including the aggressive erosion of Tibetan culture and religion.

Hong Kongers demonstrate against the dismantling of promised freedoms and autonomy in the territory since the handover, the crackdown on press freedom and the imprisonment of thousands of pro-democracy activists, including 77 year-old British citizen and media entrepreneur Jimmy Lai.

Mainland Chinese dissidents, human rights defenders, journalists, bloggers, Christians and Falun Gong practitioners protest against the brutal persecution they face under Xi Jinping’s regime.

And as Beijing’s belligerence against Taiwan intensifies, those who believe in defending one of Asia’s most vibrant, open and free democracies may also wish to protest more regularly outside China’s embassy.

That is potentially a lot of people who may wish to gather, with their friends and supporters, at one of London’s most congested junctions in a very small space.

Indeed, on Saturday 8 February, from 2-4pm, there will be a protest outside the Royal Mint against the proposed new Chinese embassy. Let’s make it massive – to prove the point. Join us.

Add to these factors, the potential for this proposed mega-embassy to increase China’s army of thugs, spies, cyber-warriors, influencers and infiltrators in the UK.

And add to that the fact that the ordinary residents of Tower Hamlets living in properties around the Royal Mint have said very clearly they do not wish to be surrounded, overlooked and potentially surveilled by a compound of Beijing’s spies.

In the face of all these facts, why would Lammy and Cooper cave in?

Sadly, it is all part of the new Government’s naïve and misguided new ‘Operation Kowtow’ to Xi Jinping’s regime. Lammy visited China last October, Reeves visited earlier this month and Keir Starmer, who has had a call and a meeting with Xi, is rumoured to visit soon.

Starmer’s Government is re-making the age-old mistakes in China diplomacy all over again. Those who frame the debate as a choice between whether or not to engage Beijing are proposing a false dichotomy. It is not about whether to talk or trade with China, but how? On whose terms, with what criteria, on what conditions and with what objectives? 

Whoever is advising Starmer, Lammy and Cooper is giving them the over-baked and outdated advice of the past. The idea that we can only trade with China by caving in and waving the white flag to the bullies of Beijing is just plain wrong. 

We can and should find ways to engage Beijing. But on our terms.

By defending our values, freedoms and interests. 

By requiring the release of a British citizen like Jimmy Lai from prison, an end to forced labour, slave labour and prison labour in our supply chains, a stop to atrocity crimes against the Uyghurs, Tibetans, Falun Gong, as well as an end to the persecution of Christians, the crackdown in Hong Kong and the threats to Taiwan, as conditions for better relations.

That would surely be better than the pathetic pittance of £600 million of trade over five years Rachel Reeves’ approach yielded.

Britain’s economy is not in good shape. But the answer is not to compromise our values or surrender our security, and especially not for a woeful few pennies. It isn’t time to go to Beijing with a begging bowl. It’s time to stand up tall, re-engage our global relationships and diversify our supply chains, investments and trading relationships. 

To use an old adage: don’t put all your eggs in one basket.

And to use a Chinese adage: don’t be a ‘stupid egg’.

This Article was published in CapX on 29 January 2025.