Allowing a London Monument to China's Power? Bad Idea.
Beijing’s revived plans for a super embassy should give the UK government pause for thought.
The Royal Mint Court office complex, where China proposes to build its super embassy.
Photographer: Hollie Adams/BloombergChina’s “super embassy” is back. Having looked dead last year, plans to build Europe’s largest diplomatic complex just across from the Tower of London are again active — and the decision will be taken by Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner rather than the elected local representatives who unanimously rejected them in late 2022. The project shows ominous signs of having become a chess piece in Labour’s attempts to reset relations with the world’s second-largest economy.
The proposed compound on the site of the former Royal Mint would be huge, with a gross external area of almost 57,000 square meters (614,000 square feet) according to the resubmitted (and largely unchanged) planning application. That’s almost 10 times the size of China’s existing embassy in Portland Place in west London and more than a third bigger than its Washington mission in the US, a country with five times the population of Britain. It’s also bigger than the US embassy’s purpose-built, 12-story home in a former industrial area south of the River Thames.