Starmer Greenlights China’s “Mega-Embassy” as U.S. Government and Hong Kong Activists Warn of Hi-Tech Espionage Hub

LONDON — Keir Starmer’s Labour government has granted permission for China to build a “mega” embassy near the Tower of London—an outcome condemned by Hong Kong democracy advocates and the U.S. House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, who say Downing Street has brushed aside years of warnings that the complex could become a high-tech espionage hub, as Starmer pursues deeper trade ties with Beijing despite mounting national security risks.

“The UK’s decision defies common sense,” John Moolenaar, chairman of the U.S. House Committee said in a statement this morning.

“The decision by the British government to approve the largest Chinese embassy in Europe, right in the heart of London, despite warnings from British and foreign parliamentarians, our Five Eyes allies, opposition groups, local residents, Britain’s own security services, and the police is an astonishing and appalling decision,” said Mark Sabah, U.K. director at the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation, in a statement provided to The Bureau. “The risks to Britain’s national security are clear to everyone, except it seems to Keir Starmer and the government he leads.”

Sabah added that the site’s “redacted floor plans, underground chambers and proximity to sensitive data cables” made the approval “the wrong decision for Britain’s national security and for British citizens.”

The approval comes in the wake of the Starmer government’s decision to wind down a counter-intelligence case alleging that two former China-based language teachers penetrated Westminster and passed sensitive political information on Conservative lawmakers pushing a tougher stance on Beijing—sending real-time reports up the chain toward senior Chinese intelligence, in an operation that reports alleged was tasked by a top Politburo figure close to President Xi Jinping.

Washington’s China hawks had already framed the collapse of that case as possibly linked to the mega-embassy approval, and characterized the embassy decision as a test of allied intelligence cohesion.

In a November 2025 letter to U.K. Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper, the chair of the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee, Brian Mast, and the chair of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, John Moolenaar, urged Britain to deny the project, citing “serious security concerns” about its proximity to critical communications infrastructure and China’s “lack of transparency in disclosing full plans.”

A companion House Foreign Affairs Committee press release quoted Rep. Keith Self, chair of the Europe subcommittee, explicitly invoking the intelligence alliance: “As a fellow Five Eyes intelligence partner, I am urging our allies in London to refuse this embassy construction at once.”

The approval ends a years-long standoff over the proposed redevelopment of Royal Mint Court, a historic compound purchased by China in 2018. In 2022, Tower Hamlets Council rejected the project, citing local impacts and security concerns; China later resubmitted its plans, and central government ultimately took control of the decision.

Critics have long focused on the site’s proximity to underground fibre-optic infrastructure connecting London’s financial districts—arguing that a large diplomatic footprint and substantial below-ground construction could create opportunities for espionage.

In recent weeks, The Daily Telegraph reported that publicly available plans had been heavily redacted, but that the paper obtained fuller drawings indicating hundreds of concealed rooms and a “hidden” underground space close to high-speed cables—fueling renewed political pressure on Starmer to block the development.

Luke de Pulford, executive director of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, argued that the sheer scale of the new compound creates its own risk profile. “More state employees from the People’s Republic of China equals more Chinese interference,” de Pulford told The Guardian this week. The Independent separately quoted de Pulford as saying: “Years of campaigning about the obvious and manifold risks posed by this embassy development have not been enough to outweigh the UK government’s desire for Beijing’s money.”

The Starmer government has said security agencies were consulted throughout the process and that protective measures have been put in place—insisting that “national security is our first duty.”

The embassy approval also comes amid mounting controversy over the collapse of Britain’s most serious China-linked espionage case in decades.

Some of the stunning details reported in leaks to the British press included that alleged Chinese agent Christopher Berry was intercepted at Heathrow Airport in February 2023 with £4,000 in cash after flying in from China, an incident later central to a counter-intelligence investigation involving parliamentary researcher Christopher Cash. According to reports, senior officials—including National Security Adviser Jonathan Powell—attended a closed-door meeting in September 2025, alongside MI5 Director-General Sir Ken McCallum, at which the potential damage to U.K.–China relations from pursuing the case was discussed, weeks before prosecutors abandoned the file.

The Crown Prosecution Service later said the case could not proceed after the government declined to certify that China constituted an “ongoing threat” under the Official Secrets Act—a decision the government insists was lawful and apolitical, but which has drawn sharp criticism from opposition figures and rare public concern from U.S. lawmakers over the implications for Five Eyes intelligence cooperation.

In the wake of that decision, as reported previously by The Bureau, John Moolenaar issued an extraordinary public rebuke, explicitly questioning whether the collapsed spy case was linked to the embassy controversy.

In a two-page letter dated October 16, 2025, addressed to James Roscoe, chargé d’affaires at the British Embassy in Washington, Moolenaar warned that Britain’s decision to abandon the prosecution risked setting “a dangerous precedent that foreign adversaries can target democratically elected legislators with impunity.”

He wrote that the decision “deeply troubles” U.S. lawmakers and “undermines Five Eyes security coordination,” given the substantial amount of evidence against Berry and Christopher Cash. Moolenaar added that the decision to drop the prosecution “paints a concerning picture,” considering concurrent negotiations over China’s proposed “super embassy” in London.

“Allowing this PRC aggression to go unchecked,” he warned, “would only incentivize the CCP to further interfere in Western democracies.”

Reuters reported Tuesday that the new embassy approval was announced ahead of an expected Starmer visit to China—one British leader would be making for the first time since 2018—and that British and Chinese officials had linked progress on the trip to movement on the embassy file. Starmer has argued that deeper engagement with China can sit alongside a firm security posture, but the embassy decision has reopened a familiar question for U.K. policymakers: whether trade-driven diplomacy is pulling Britain into avoidable strategic exposure.

For Hong Kong activists, the stakes are personal. The Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation has repeatedly warned that an expanded Chinese diplomatic hub in central London could intensify pressure on dissidents and diaspora communities—who already report harassment, surveillance, and intimidation linked to Beijing’s transnational repression campaigns.

In his statement, Sabah said the approval “gives completely the wrong signal, both to Beijing and our international allies,” and called for urgent scrutiny of “why, despite every possible warning, these plans have continued to be pushed ahead regardless.”