Chinese embassy to get green light despite ‘threat to City’
The new Chinese embassy in London is set to get the green light from Keir Starmer this week, according to reports, amid fresh questions around security concerns were raised on Monday night.
The new mega embassy at the Royal Mint Court near Canada is expected to get the Prime Minister’s sign-off ahead of a crucial deadline next Tuesday, The Times has reported.
Starmer is also set to visit Beijing later this month and take senior business figures on the trip in an effort to boost trade ties and remedy diplomatic relations.
Fresh briefings on the expected approval of the embassy came as a leaked memo of planning applications uncovering redacted rooms on the site was published in The Telegraph.
The report appeared to uncover secret rooms located near critical fibre-optic cables connecting the City with Canary Wharf.
The proximity of the proposed embassy to these cables has caused concern among officials and City chiefs about Chinese espionage and the security of sensitive information.
Security services have dropped concerns around the planning application, according to the government, but top Tory Alicia Kearns, the shadow national security minister, said that approving the application would be “to hand China a launchpad for economic warfare at the very heart of our critical financial infrastructure,” adding “No one can reassure me that the CCP’s technological capabilities will be containable in a decade – let alone five.”
Chinese embassy opposed by Labour MPs
The timing of the embassy approval is set to be awkward for the Labour government, with reports in recent months revealing that Chinese spy operations have breached high-level systems across the government.
Several Labour MPs, including Sarah Champion, who sits on parliament’s Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy, wrote to the Prime Minister on Monday to warn the government against approving the embassy plan.
The letter signed by nine Labour officials raised concerns about “the fact that this embassy would sit above sensitive infrastructure critical to both the UK’s economic and national security”.
It also highlighted the “the recent track record of Chinese espionage cases, interference activities, and issuing of bounties against UK-based Hong Kongers”.
Starmer and senior government officials have opted to walk a tightrope on diplomacy with China, the UK’s fourth largest single trading partner.
Foreign direct investment from China has gradually decreased over recent years though imports from the country have increased to £72.5bn in the year to July 2025.
Financial and advisory sectors make up a large part of trade in services between the UK and China, behind only travel, official data shows.
Starmer has been repeatedly warned about the threats posed by China since the collapse of the prosecution of two alleged spies, who both deny all allegations.
MI5 boss Ken McCallum highlighted China’s security threat in a speech last October, adding that the domestic intelligence body had frequently intervened to stop plots.
A spokesman for the Chinese embassy has criticised reports “peddling China spy narratives and vilifying China”.