All eyes tonight will be on Rishi Sunak when he addresses the annual Lord Mayor’s Banquet. The Prime Minister is expected to give his first major speech on foreign policy in which he will pledge to treat Britain’s adversaries in Beijing and Moscow with ‘robust pragmatism.’ Such talk is likely to be read in the Westminster village as a signal that Sunak will likely prioritise economic benefits when it comes to relations with countries such as China.
So it’s fitting then that a perfect symbol of such co-operation is found just a mile away from London’s Guildhall in the borough of Tower Hamlets. Here, on the site of the nation’s old Royal Mint, there are plans to build the world’s largest Chinese embassy, sitting opposite the Tower of London. The People’s Republic of China handed over £255 million to become the landlord of the historic 700,000 ft site back in 2018. This Thursday will see the long-awaited ‘strategic development meeting’ at which Tower Hamlets councillors have to decide whether to approve the scheme or not.
Mr S has read the 74-page planning application and it makes for, er, interesting reading. According to the proposal, complaints submitted by ‘local residents and other stakeholders’ include concerns that the building could become ‘a secret police station’ and fears that residents will see a repeat of the ‘violent assault of protesters at the Manchester Chinese Consulate.’
Others have also cited ‘the actions of the Chinese government in relation to other countries and human rights record’ in light of Beijing’s crackdown on Uighur Muslims. The borough of Tower Hamlets is 38 per cent Muslim and is home to Cable Street where a march in 1936 by Oswald Mosley’s black shirts were famously turned back by locals. The specific Royal Mint site is also the site of the only Cistercian Abbey built in an urban area in Britain.
Conservative Councillor Peter Golds will be one of those speaking against the proposal on Thursday night, citing the local community’s opposition and concerns that it will impact a World Heritage Site, given the additional traffic it will bring to the already-congested Tower Hill area. There is also a strong likelihood that the new embassy will become a magnet for protesters.
Golds told Steerpike: ‘Can you imagine the French putting an embassy just next to the Eiffel Tower or the Chinese allowing one in Tiananmen Square? It’s the first thing tourists will see when they get off the buses.’ He is supporting residents who are urging the Secretary of State – in this case one Michael Gove – to call in the application for review. In the House of Lords today, the government confirmed that this option is currently under review, in response to a question by longtime China campaigner Lord Alton.
There’s a historical irony to all this too. During the nineteenth century, the Royal Mint took delivery of the tonnes of silver that China was forced to pay as part of the settlements to the UK, including the ‘unfair treaties’ that ended the opium wars and made Hong Kong a British colony. Now it is Chinese money which seeks to flow the other way, to occupy the site which once served as a symbol of its national subjugation.
A test for Sunak and the government’s new ‘robust pragmatism’ perhaps?
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