In the weeks and days leading up to January 20, 2026, reports coming out of Britain about the proposed monolithic Chinese embassy in London routinely said that final UK approval was expected on January 20, 2026.
It has arrived (CBS News, 2026):
It will be China’s biggest embassy in Europe.
The U.K. government’s decision ended a saga that began in 2018 with Beijing’s purchase for nearly $350 million of the former Royal Mint building, which used to produce Britain’s money and long served as a symbol of the U.K.’s economic might. After the COVID pandemic, the U.K. government—amid multiple changes in leadership—delayed final approval for the project as intelligence experts, members of the Chinese diaspora, and would-be future neighbors of the new embassy raised concerns and protested.
Sir Richard Dearlove, the former head of the British foreign intelligence service MI6, previously called on the government to reject China’s plans to build on the site, which sits on top of buried cables that transmit sensitive financial and commercial data across the U.K. capital….
With a larger physical presence, Beijing could also employ more Chinese diplomatic staff, who would have freedom of movement in Britain thanks to diplomatic visas….
Separately, on political grounds, the 240-page report by the U.K. Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government said decisions about embassy approval should not be decided based on a country’s style of governance….
“It is not possible to discriminate against a use on the basis of the anticipated user. Otherwise that could give rise to an untenable situation of the embassy of one nation being permitted but another nations embassy being refused.”
Wow. “It is not possible to discriminate against a use on the basis of the anticipated user.” Not even to protect the people of your country from expanded incursion. Just not possible. There’s a metaphysical law stitched into the very fabric of the cosmos rendering it impossible to not surrender to the UK’s most powerful enemy.
MP Chris Law says:
The UK government’s decision to green-light the People’s Republic of China’s new diplomatic headquarters at Royal Mint Court is not just a planning failure. It’s a moral capitulation that has prioritised diplomatic expediency over national security and human rights.
When we should be de-risking our relationship with the Chinese Communist Party’s increasingly assertive and repressive regime, we are instead cementing their influence, quite literally, into the foundations of our capital….
For Tibetans, as well as Uyghurs, Hong Kongers and many in the Chinese diaspora in the UK, this mega-embassy is not merely an administrative change; it is a source of visceral dread.
The CCP is the world’s most aggressive perpetrator of transnational repression. From diaspora communities in the UK, my colleagues and I [in the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Tibet] hear harrowing accounts of harassment, threatening phone calls, surveillance of community events, and the detention and coercion of family members back home. By permitting the construction of Europe’s largest Chinese diplomatic mission, we are upgrading the engine room of state-sponsored intimidation and signalling to the CCP that these actions are acceptable.
Once built, the mega embassy would have no problem surveilling the traffic of the nearby underground data cables given the CCP’s expertise in hacking. And as Chris Law reports, persecuted Chinese nationals now living in the UK have good reason to believe that such an embassy would facilitate harassment of expatriate Chinese.
CBS News says that the saga of opposition to the embassy is over. Well, the building doesn’t exist yet. Even people leaning over a brink can pull back. Construction can still be prevented.
One scenario: the Starmer gang gets booted from power, perhaps because of this and other CCP-enabling scandals plus all the other scandals, and a new Tory government proves to be made of sterner stuff than the last several pre-Starmer Tory governments. This is not impossible.
