While there has been no shortage of politicians eager to raise concerns about China\u2019s proposed \u201cmega embassy\u201d near the Tower of London, the espionage community quietly takes a different view, arguing that concerns about the development are exaggerated and misplaced.<\/p>\n
The domestic Security Service, MI5<\/a>, is already quietly welcoming the prospect of rationalising China\u2019s seven diplomatic sites to one, but a more significant argument is that modern technology and the nature of the Chinese threat means that, in the words of one former British intelligence officer, \u201cembassies are less and less relevant\u201d.<\/p>\n Spies have long operated from diplomatic outposts, posing as officials or trade envoys. If, as is expected, China is granted planning permission this month to build a new embassy complex at Royal Mint Court, it will employ over 200 people. All are expected to be Chinese nationals, in line with Beijing\u2019s normal policy, from the lowest kitchen porter to the ambassador, with residences provided on site.<\/p>\n As is the case now with its smaller existing embassy on Portland Place, north of Oxford Circus, among them will be a handful of undeclared officers from its ministry of state security (MSS) and military intelligence. According to one former MI6 officer, \u201cthey will be acting as \u2018radars\u2019, highlighting contacts of potential interest, getting to know people,\u201d all of which are routine intelligence tasks.<\/p>\n Yet it will not be easy for any of them to engage in the \u201cserious business of espionage\u201d, the former officer argued, not least because any embassy would be a \u201cmagnet for attention and surveillance\u201d. A single site, officials have argued, makes that task easier, allowing MI5 to monitor the activities of Chinese officials, if needed, as they conduct themselves across the UK.<\/p>\n It is also a psychological warning, subtler than the embassy-monitoring techniques used by China and Russia in their own back yard. British diplomats who have worked in Beijing or Moscow already operate on the premise they are watched and monitored digitally 24 hours a day. \u201cYou have to assume your life is not your own,\u201d said John Foreman, a former UK defence attache to Moscow in the run-up to the start of the war in Ukraine.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019d chat to my opposite number in Beijing and we\u2019d try to work out who of the two of us was most followed,\u201d Foreman said. Every time he left the British embassy in the Russian capital he would be tailed. If it was on foot, by a couple of people; if it was by car, \u201cthere could be as many as four, because I was a defence attache\u201d.<\/p>\n Russian agents would \u201cpoint thinly concealed listening devices at you if you sat in a cafe,\u201d the former attache said. They would also track planned movements on his phone, adding that \u201cthey were quicker to find you if you used a Russian app rather than Google\u201d. The whole aim was to put pressure on people, to the point where they lost their judgment. \u201cSome people got so intimidated they wouldn\u2019t leave the embassy, which was the point.\u201d<\/p>\n Critics of the planned Chinese embassy argue that it is the greater size of the new development that poses key problems. \u201cMore state employees from the People\u2019s Republic of China equals more Chinese interference,\u201d said Luke de Pulford, the executive director of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, pointing to a US decision to shut a Chinese consulate in Houston in 2020 as an example.<\/p>\n The diplomatic mission in Texas, comprising of 60 employees, was shut suddenly on US orders in July 2020 towards the end of the first Trump administration amid accusations that it was a base for planned intellectual property theft, in particular of medical research during the coronavirus pandemic, and that it was a location for the coercion of Chinese citizens wanted in their homeland.<\/p>\n A second concern was highlighted in the Daily Telegraph last week. Publicly available floor plans for the embassy had been heavily redacted, but the newspaper obtained the full floor plans, revealing 208 previously blacked-out rooms, including a \u201chidden chamber\u201d near high speed internet cables running through the adjacent street. The cabling, the newspaper suggested, could be at risk of being tapped underground.<\/p>\n It is understood that the full plans were well known to the security services as part of the planning process, now led by the communities secretary, Steve Reed. Insiders add that even though the Royal Mint Court site is roughly between London\u2019s two financial districts in the City and Canary Wharf, the concerns about cabling are exaggerated. \u201cTraffic can be re-rerouted and, if necessary, cabling removed,\u201d an official said.<\/p>\n However, recent espionage incidents in the UK demonstrate that China does not run key intelligence operations out of embassies. Much of Beijing\u2019s spying activity is conducted from China \u2013 from where it has hacked into global phone networks, in the Salt Typhoon episode<\/a>. Pressure placed on researchers at Sheffield Hallam University to halt research about human rights abuses in China was conducted in Beijing<\/a>.<\/p>\n Three recent attempts by China to interfere in the Westminster parliament have all been conducted outside the embassy. Christine Lee, an Anglo-Chinese lawyer, was accused of trying to covertly cultivate \u201crelationships with influential figures\u201d<\/a> in 2022 and subject of an MI5 warning. A parliamentary aide, Christopher Cash, was accused of passing sensitive information about Westminster <\/a>to a friend, Christopher Berry, based in China, though a prosecution of the two collapsed.<\/p>\n Two recruitment consultants based in China, Amanda Qiu and Shirly Shen, were accused by MI5 of using LinkedIn to try to recruit MPs and peers to obtain \u201cnon-public and insider insights\u201d and, ultimately, insider information. \u201cThe embassy is only a small part of the total espionage threat from China; we need to be more alert to where the real dangers are coming from, when to be permissive and when to be assertive,\u201d a former senior Whitehall official said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"While there has been no shortage of politicians eager to raise concerns about China\u2019s proposed \u201cmega embassy\u201d near…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":376771,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-376770","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376770","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=376770"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376770\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/376771"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=376770"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=376770"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=376770"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}