The British prime minister, Keir Starmer, has said he wants a “consistent, respectful and pragmatic” relationship with China, which bodes well for his country. This marks a break with the policy of his predecessors Rishi Sunak, Liz Truss and Boris Johnson, who slavishly emulated America’s Beijing-hostile stances. He has recently sent his chancellor of the exchequer (finance minister), Rachel Reeves, and his foreign secretary, David Lammy, to Beijing on goodwill visits, and is reportedly planning to go himself. If his “pragmatic engagement” policy yields fruit, it could boost the British economy by over 1 billion pounds ($1.34 billion) in the next five years.
However, not everybody welcomes these developments, and some people will go to any lengths to torpedo improved Sino-British ties. Whereas Peter Navarro, US President Donald Trump’s economic adviser, condemned the UK for becoming “a compliant servant of communist China”, other US politicians have sought to interfere with the UK’s internal affairs. Once, for example, they learned that China was seeking approval to build a new London embassy, two of Washington’s most notorious ideologues mobilized in support of Britain’s anti-China brigade.
In February, in an open letter to the UK’s ambassador in Washington, Peter Mandelson, US representatives John Moolenaar, who chairs the congressional Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party, and Chris Smith, his counterpart at the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, called on the UK to block the project. They said “gifting the Chinese communist government with the largest embassy in Europe would be counterproductive” and would “embolden its efforts to intimidate and harass UK citizens and dissidents and experts across Europe who oppose or criticize its policies”.
If, however, China were indeed minded to go down those paths, it could presumably do so from its current embassy in London’s Marylebone district, which did not appear to have occurred to them.
As is customary whenever Moolenaar and Smith hold forth, their message quickly degenerated into a hate-filled rant. Although unrelated to their supposedly core point, they resorted to myth-making and smears. They accused China of “committing atrocities against Uygurs and Tibetans”, and using “gray zone” tactics to intimidate “the people of Taiwan”. They even called on Starmer to coordinate efforts with Trump to secure the “unconditional release” of the Apple Daily founder, Jimmy Lai Chee-ying, whose trial on national security charges (allegedly involving collusion with the US to endanger national security) is nearing completion in Hong Kong.
The Chinese embassy at 49 Portland Place was established in 1877, and includes several outlying buildings in other parts of London. It is little wonder that China wants to upgrade its facility, just as the US has done. In 2018, the Chinese government, with an eye on the future, purchased the historic Royal Mint Court, in Tower Hamlets, where the coins were made until the 1960s. Close to the Tower of London and the Thames, the site, which is centrally situated and enjoys good access throughout London, covers about 600,000 square feet (55,740 square meters). The case for a new embassy has reportedly been made to Starmer at the highest levels, and China envisages a state-of-the-art embassy fit for the 21st century. Its current premises are relatively cramped, and it needs an embassy that will enable it to discharge its various commitments and partner with the UK as it progresses post-Brexit.
In the same way, the US, having shut its embassy in Mayfair’s Grosvenor Square, where it was based since 1938, opened its new facility in London’s Nine Elms district in 2018. It cost $1.2 billion and was the single most expensive embassy building ever built by the US. It was almost twice the size of its predecessor, and was described on its website as “a working landscape that incorporates a range of sustainable technologies”. US officials told CNN that “it would have cost hundreds of millions to upgrade security at the older building and bring it up to modern safety standards”, undoubtedly also a potent consideration for the Chinese government, whose embassy is far older.
Starmer has made improved relations with China a major foreign policy objective of his government, and there is no reason to suppose he is not genuine. However, if he wants to be seen as a reliable partner, he should prove it. In big things and small, he must put his money where his mouth is, not least because it is in the British national interest
Although Tower Hamlets Council, after hostile lobbying, previously rejected plans for the new embassy, citing spurious “safety concerns”, the Labour government has now intervened. In October 2024, Starmer’s deputy, Angela Rayner, also the housing secretary, said the government, not Tower Hamlets Council, would decide if the embassy could proceed.
On Jan 16, City AM reported that two days previously, Lammy and the home secretary, Yvette Cooper, wrote a joint letter to England’s planning inspectorate. They stressed the “importance of countries having functional diplomatic premises in each other’s capitals”, and pointed out that the police had no objections. They also indicated that China would need to relinquish the diplomatic accreditation of its seven other premises in London, which, given the size of the proposed embassy, should not be problematic.
These developments incensed the UK’s anti-China lobby, which duly activated Moolenaar and Smith. In an effort to show that the embassy could not safely be built in Tower Hamlets, Hong Kong Watch (the UK-based propaganda outfit) and its partners organized a series of rowdy rallies at the site, some of which disrupted traffic. Although there will be more space for protesters at Tower Hamlets than there is currently at Portland Place, they have sought to frame their objections as a “freedom to protest” issue. However, few were fooled, and the police have indicated that the site surrounding the embassy can safely accommodate up to 4,500 protesters.
By arranging mass protests, the organizers hope the police will change their minds and the government will switch course. However, bigotry can only take anybody so far, and there is no reason to suppose they can pull the wool over Rayner’s eyes.
Once it became known that Lammy and Cooper favored a new embassy, the usual suspects crawled out of the woodwork. Tom Tugendhat, the former security minister who founded the McCarthyite China Research Group in Parliament and was recently appointed a Hong Kong Watch patron, called it “a grave mistake”. His parliamentary colleague, Iain Duncan Smith, co-chairman of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC), which promotes China-hostile policies in the world’s parliaments, said Tower Hamlets was “absolutely the wrong place for a vast new Chinese embassy” (he did not indicate the right place).
In an effort to stoke tensions, both Tugendhat and Duncan Smith attended the protest at the Royal Mint Court on Feb 8, and egged on the protesters. On March 15, at a follow-up protest, the serial fantasist Benedict Rogers, co-founder of Hong Kong Watch, urged everybody to say “no to this spy center”. His former lieutenant, Luke de Pulford, who helped him establish IPAC in 2020 and has figured prominently at Jimmy Lai’s national security trial over his alleged connections with the subversive entity “Fight for Freedom, Stand with Hong Kong”, was also very much in evidence. In line with the agreed strategy, he told The Guardian (April 28) that the site “isn’t safe” (for protesters), and that “there isn’t space” (for protests).
Also roped in was Simon Cheng Man-kit, the oddball best remembered for having pleaded guilty to soliciting prostitutes in Shenzhen while working for the UK’s consulate general in Hong Kong. After his release, he changed his tune and started maligning the Shenzhen authorities, for which the UK rewarded him with a passport. Although he relocated to the UK, he is wanted in Hong Kong for the crimes of alleged foreign collusion and inciting secession, and he now does whatever his handlers expect. He duly obliged by calling the proposed embassy a “fortress of oppression”.
As if this was not bizarre enough, the protest organizers even called in Rahima Mahmut, who styles herself “Executive Director-Stop Uygur Genocide”. Like Cheng, she has been given safe haven in the UK, and, like him, she uses the country as a base for spreading anti-China propaganda. Her contribution to the protests was to announce that “China had no place establishing a world headquarters of repression in our city”, a fatuous sound bite likely drafted by Rogers.
In 2020, when Trump’s then-secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, told then-prime minister Boris Johnson to reverse his stance and ban Huawei from the UK’s 5G technology, he cravenly complied. Once again, the US under Trump wants the UK to distance itself from China, even to the extent of blocking its new embassy. It must be hoped that Starmer is made of sterner stuff than Johnson, which should not be difficult.
Any day now, Rayner, having consulted Starmer, will announce her decision, and it will be a clear indication of how the Labour government wants Anglo-Chinese relations to develop. As his tariffs have shown, Trump, no matter how many royal invitations Starmer gives him, is no more than a fair-weather friend. On May 5, for example, he announced, in a potentially devastating blow to the UK’s film industry, that he will impose 100 percent tariffs on British (and other) films because “we want to make films in America again”. As Starmer hopefully realizes, Trump sees the “special relationship” as a means of ensuring that the UK does whatever the US wants, even if it means kicking Britain in the teeth whenever it likes.
Although Johnson and his two successors, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak, shamefully played along with the US, British interests must now be prioritized. Starmer claims to appreciate this, and what is sauce for the goose is also sauce for the gander. As the US was allowed to build a new embassy in London, there can be no legitimate reason to prevent China from doing the same thing. Although it would delight Washington if Starmer upset Beijing, he owes it to himself to eschew double standards and show the political maturity his predecessors so badly lacked.
Starmer has made improved relations with China a major foreign policy objective of his government, and there is no reason to suppose he is not genuine. However, if he wants to be seen as a reliable partner, he should prove it. In big things and small, he must put his money where his mouth is, not least because it is in the British national interest.
The author is a senior counsel and law professor, and was previously the director of public prosecutions of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.
