For years now, Mr S has been covering the long-running farce that is China’s proposed new ‘super-embassy’. Back in 2018, Beijing bought the site of the old Royal Mint, declaring their intention to turn the Tower Hamlets location into the country’s largest diplomatic mission in Europe. But for the past seven years, various planning concerns have held up the development.
For one thing, there’s the fact that that Tower Hamlets is almost 40 per cent Muslim: Beijing does not exactly have a good record on Uighur Muslims, given its appalling crackdown in Xinjiang. Then, there’s national security concerns: Senators on the US Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) have warned that the site risks ‘interference and surveillance’ from Beijing and poses a threat ‘for sensitive infrastructure like London’s financial services’. Reassuring stuff eh?
Yet despite all this, it seems that Labour ministers are determined to press on. Various members of the cabinet have visited China in recent months – including
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