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The 'chilling' prospects of China's 'mega-embassy' | LBC
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Aug 22, 2025
Angela Rayner has told China to explain why parts of its plans for a new super-embassy in London are redacted. The Deputy Prime Minister, who as Housing Secretary is responsible for overseeing planning matters, has given Beijing two weeks to explain why areas of its plans for the sprawling new embassy site in central London are blacked out. China hawks in Westminster have raised alarm that the embassy site could be used to conduct surveillance from British soil. Pro-democracy campaigners from Hong Kong, as well as Uighurs and Tibetans, meanwhile, fear that intimidation and reprisals from the Chinese state could result from the embassy going ahead. This follows reports that bounties have been issued by China for dissident Hong Kongers now living in the UK. Matt Frei is joined by former Home Secretary Amber Rudd to discuss what a 'super-embassy' in the centre of London could mean. Listen to the full show on the all-new LBC App: https://app.af.lbc.co.uk/btnc/thenewlbcapp #mattfrei #china #angelarayner #embassy #amberrudd #security #london #royalmint #LBC LBC is the home of live debate around news and current affairs in the UK. Join in the conversation and listen at https://www.lbc.co.uk/ Sign up to LBC’s weekly newsletter here: https://l-bc.co/signup
View Video Transcript
0:00
One of the things that sort of stood out for me when I lived in Washington, D.C.
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where I lived for over 10 years, was that one day, this building site appeared around the corner from where we lived in northwest Washington
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And it was massive. And it had above it Chinese banners and red flags and then some colorful flags
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but mainly red flags and Chinese banners that, you know, talked about the Great Four modernizations
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And this was in 2011, I think it was. and it was the building of the Chinese, the new Chinese embassy in Washington
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A massive, you know, monstrosity of a building for this newly super powerful superpower
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And anyway, it was just, what was amazing about it was it was an entirely Chinese affair
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There was not a single American worker to be seen, a construction worker. There were no American architects involved
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You know, the local authorities had to sign off on it, as you would expect. And the same thing is now happening in London
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So the Chinese want to build their mega embassy, perhaps the biggest in the world, maybe even bigger than the one in Washington, in London, fair enough, but actually in the former Royal Mint building, which is in the heart of the city of London
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and given China's proclivity for espionage, industrial and otherwise, you kind of think
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is it a good idea to have this massive Chinese embassy above all the wires and cables that
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connect the City of London to itself and to other financial headquarters around the world
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And then the Chinese have been asked to hand over the building plans, as you would expect
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and they did, but then there were all these redacted bits in the building plans, you know, bits blacked out, which they're not telling us about. Now, why on earth would they
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do that. Someone who's very upset about it was our own Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner. She's
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demanded that China explain what on earth is going on amid these aforementioned security fears
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And of course, as ever, you know, British governments are caught in a difficult position
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out there. They want to do business with China, but at the same time, they don't like a lot of the stuff that the Chinese are doing, whether it's with students here or with the embassy now
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Someone else who's not very happy about it is Amber Rudd, former Conservative Home Secretary
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and co-presenter of the fantastic Global podcast. A double plug there for Global and indeed for the podcast
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that is known as the Crisis Room. Tell us, Amber, about the Crisis Room quickly
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For those who are just, you know, benighted enough not to have listened to it
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just quickly, the Crisis Room, what's it about? Thank you so much, Matt. Yes, very quickly, each week with Mark Urban
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and Mark Polymeropolis, who's a former CIA intelligence officer, we look at the latest weekly crisis
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and try and give a different perspective on it from a former Secretary of State a former intelligence officer and a current foreign journalist Mark Urban We got something different It great fun Easy to listen to Easy to listen to It very exciting And my God there a lot to discuss including the Chinese mega embassy So why are you not happy about this embassy
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Well, we have a history slightly in this country of thinking that we can do business with China
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and then discovering a little later than perhaps other people that it may have been a mistake
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Hands up, I have to say I was a bit guilty of that. I was all enthusiastic to take their money
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when we were developing Hinkley Point, and we then had to move away from them later
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when we decided we didn't trust them after all with information about nuclear energy
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And then, of course, the same thing happened with Huawei when we allowed Huawei to become part of our infrastructure
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and then, pressed by the Americans, let's face it, we took them out again
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So let's get this right first time this time. You described it very well, the historic site of the Royal Mid
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It's five acres. It's in the city. It's a historic building. You know, we are a proud country. We like to be patriotic about
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our buildings as well as our values. And to allow the Royal Mint to become a centrepiece
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for the Chinese government feels entirely wrong. So I'm really pleased that Angela Rayner has
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pointed out that there's all sorts of areas apparently in the basement that they have not
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given details on and has given her a reason to postpone making a decision. She's supposed to
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making decision on September the 9th. I confidently predict that this will run and run. It's an awkward
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situation for the government. They want to be friends with one of our strongest economic partners
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and we do a lot of business with China. But on the other hand, security forces will be giving them
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a chilling interpretation of what could happen. Okay, but even if they were to fess up about what
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they plan in the basement, whether it's a gym or a cinema or bowling alley or some listening devices
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or perhaps all the above, what power would we have to stop it that would not incur the kind of
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economic cost that we might regret? It's always going to irritate the Chinese, which is where
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good diplomacy comes in, with constant reassurance and postponement. I think that's what we get
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And I can tell you pretty certainly it won't be a gym or a bowling alley, but it won't be things
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that they will disclose to us. But it would be a big mistake to allow China
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to have such a big... It's not just size you described earlier
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about the one in Washington. This is a historic building. I think that's what people find particularly offensive
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And that it's so close to the city. They are famed with their successful espionage
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and, quite frankly, cyber attacks. And they'd have all the ability to do it from there
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So I think it's going to be a slow grind on this one. I would be very surprised if Angela Rayner allows it to go through Most of our historic buildings when they sold off tend to go to luxury hotel chains like the War Ministry has gone to Raffles and the former American embassy which I guess is an ugly but still historic building
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in Groverness Square, has gone to another hotel chain. So this is breaking with that precedent
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So what would you allow the Chinese to do when it comes to building a new embassy
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Well, they have a perfectly good embassy at the moment. If they want to enlarge that, be my guest
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Work with us to find a different building they find it doesn't work for them. But it's the scale of this and the heritage of it and the
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location that many people like me find so difficult. I mean, I don't know if you had to
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deal with this when you were Home Secretary, but what I find extraordinary, and I hear accounts of
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this over and over again, is Chinese students from the mainland, you know, picking fights with
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Chinese students from Hong Kong. And of course, the Chinese student body in Britain and universities
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are one of our best exports is huge. And, you know, universities rely on them
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Chinese students from the mainland picking fights or intimidating Chinese professors because they fail to, you know
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mention that Taiwan was part of the Republic of China on maps
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I mean, silly stuff like that. It is extraordinary, is it not
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that we have allowed Chinese domestic politics to be introduced into this country in this way
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and we're not doing enough about it. Well, I do think there was a big pushback on that
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and I know that sort of under the Conservative government there was and I'm sure there will be under this as well
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You know, it's a permanent conflict, isn't it, of government? We want their money, we just don't want their control
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There is a good, strong history of the UK having people from all sorts of different countries into our universities
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and turning them into supporters of the UK. So I think it's absolutely right to welcome as many foreign students as we can
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but it's also right to make sure that we know what we're doing
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and don't allow a line to be crossed. I mean, don't forget, there was that ugly scene, wasn't there
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outside the current Chinese embassy, when a student was pulled in, a protester, and a fight broke out
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Or was it in Manchester? Was it the concert in Manchester? Maybe, I'm not sure. That's right, it was, yes
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This is not the same as the American embassy or the French embassy
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This is a different prospect. And it's about the scales. We were the biggest in Europe as well
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We have a common problem with our European friends, with espionage from the Chinese
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And for us to then allow this scale to be in London
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a financial centre, would add difficulty to our relationships. Indeed. And if the French embassy were to pull you in
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you'd probably think it's for a decent croissant and a cup of café au lait, which hasn't happened yet either
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Just finally, on a different... Sorry, that was utterly spurious stuff. Just finally Amber as a former Home Secretary the one policy currently exercised by the British government in conjunction with the French government is that a solution that might work do you think I think the big
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difference that this government have pulled off, which previous governments failed to do
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with a strong relationship with the French, and I really welcome what Yvette Cooper has pulled off
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I mean, don't forget, in the previous years since Brexit, it's all been hostile relationships with
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the French or growing hostility. We were able to work, I was able to work under Theresa May
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very closely with our French. We had no channel crossings to speak of. We had different problems
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but we didn't have those. And I worked very closely with the French, with the French equivalent of
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border force. That all fell apart subsequently. And I think that played a large part in the growing
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terrible crime of moving these people across the channel. And so I really welcome what Ivette has
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done. I hope it's just a start because it's a big hill to climb to actually stop these boats
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But without express cooperation from the French government, from the French cops on the beaches
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in Calais, this ain't going to work, is it? You're not going to stop these boats. But it is starting to work. My question is whether it will work in a large enough way at scale
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given the size of the people coming across the channel. The fact is 50 a week
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It's not a bad number as long as it goes up from there. You know, in my last year as Home Secretary, we returned, I think, 300 to France
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So it's an escalation from that. But the scale of the problem now because of the number of people and the business model of these traffickers is going to be so hard to stop entirely
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And if we were still members of the European Union under the so-called Dublin Agreement
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where, you know, those people who come into the EU have to be returned wherever else they are in the EU to the original country they came in on
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Would that make it easier for us to deal with the small boats? I think we would have got into this situation because, as I say
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my last year in 2018, we returned about 300 under Dublin. Right
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And she is proposing doing more, but we didn't have the same problem. She's got this enormous problem of the scale of the trafficking
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You know, it's, what is it, nearly 1,000 a week sometimes. So why has it gone up so much
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I mean, I'm not sure how close you're involved in it now, but it does seem as if the number of boats crossing, you know
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the Maritime N25, otherwise known as the channel, has gone up exponentially
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Well, it started under Covid. And I think it started because on a quiet day
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when there was no traffic across the so-called M25 that is the channel
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the first boats started coming saying, we had this was the most dangerous route in the world
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And it turned out not to be. And it's just escalated. And the word spreads. As long as it works, people will keep coming
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Of course. Stop working. Amber Ard, thank you very much indeed. Your global podcast is called The Crisis Room
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