Why a Chinese ‘mega embassy’ is not such a worry for British spies | China

While there are not many politicians willing to voice concerns about China’s proposed “mega embassy” near the Tower of London, the espionage community has quietly taken a different view, arguing that concerns about this development are overblown and misplaced.

The National Security Service (MI5) is already quietly welcoming the prospect of rationalizing China’s seven diplomatic venues, but a more important argument is that modern technology and the nature of the Chinese threat mean that, in the words of a former British intelligence officer, “embassies are increasingly less relevant”.

Spies have long operated from diplomatic outposts, posing as officials or trade envoys. If, as expected, China is granted planning permission to build a new embassy complex at the Royal Mint Court this month, more than 200 people will be employed there. In line with Beijing’s normal policy, everyone from the lowest-ranking kitchen staff to the ambassador is expected to be a Chinese citizen and housing is provided on-site.

As is currently the case at the existing, smaller embassy in Portland Place, north of Oxford Circus, they will include a handful of unnamed officers from the Ministry of State Security (MSS) and military intelligence. According to a former MI6 officer, “they will act as ‘radar’, highlighting areas of potential interest, identifying people” and these are all routine intelligence duties.

The former officer argued that it would not be easy for anyone to become involved in “serious espionage business” as any embassy would be “a magnet for attention and surveillance”. Officials have suggested that a single site facilitates this task, allowing MI5 to monitor the activities of Chinese officials across the UK if necessary.

This is also a more subtle psychological warning than the embassy surveillance techniques China and Russia use in their own backyards. British diplomats working in Beijing or Moscow currently operate under the assumption that they are digitally monitored and monitored 24 hours a day. “You have to assume that your life is not your own,” John Foreman, Britain’s former defense attache in Moscow, said just before the start of the war in Ukraine.

“I would chat with my counterpart in Beijing and we would try to find out which of us was followed the most,” Foreman said. He was followed every time he left the British embassy in the Russian capital. If it is done on foot by several people; If it had been by car, “it could have been up to four because I was the defense attache.”

The former attache said Russian agents would “point thinly disguised listening devices at you when you sit in a cafe”. They were also tracking planned movements on his phone, adding that “they will find you faster if you use a Russian app instead of Google.” The whole purpose was to repress people so much that they lost their ability to reason. “Some people were so scared they wouldn’t leave the embassy, ​​which was the whole point.”

Critics of the planned Chinese embassy argue that the sheer size of the new development poses fundamental problems. “More government workers from the People’s Republic of China equals more Chinese interference,” said Luke de Pulford, executive director of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, pointing to the U.S. decision to close a Chinese consulate in Houston in 2020 as an example.

The 60-staff diplomatic mission in Texas was abruptly shut down on U.S. orders in July 2020, near the end of the first Trump administration, amid accusations that it was a base for planned theft of intellectual property, particularly medical research during the coronavirus outbreak, and that it was cracking down on Chinese citizens wanted in their homeland.

A second concern was highlighted in the Daily Telegraph last week. The embassy’s publicly available floor plans had been largely redacted, but the newspaper obtained full floor plans, revealing 208 previously darkened rooms, including a “secret room” near high-speed internet cables running across the adjacent street. The newspaper suggested that the cables may be at risk of being pulled underground.

All the plans are understood to be well known to the security services as part of the planning process currently led by communities secretary Steve Reed. Insiders add that concerns about cabling are overblown, despite the Royal Mint Court site being located roughly between London’s two financial districts in the City and Canary Wharf. “Traffic can be rerouted and cables can be removed if necessary,” an official said.

However, recent espionage incidents in the UK show that China does not conduct significant intelligence operations outside of embassies. Most of Beijing’s espionage activities are conducted from China, where it infiltrated global phone networks in the Salt Typhoon episode. The pressure on researchers at Sheffield Hallam University to stop research into human rights abuses in China was carried out in Beijing.

China’s last three attempts to interfere in the Westminster parliament have all been carried out outside the embassy. British-Chinese lawyer Christine Lee was accused of secretly trying to “establish relationships with influential people” in 2022 and was subject to an MI5 warning. Parliamentary aide Christopher Cash was accused of passing sensitive information about Westminster to his China-based friend Christopher Berry, but the case against the two collapsed.

Two China-based recruitment consultants, Amanda Qiu and Shirly Shen, were accused by MI5 of using LinkedIn to recruit MPs and colleagues to obtain “non-public and inside information” and ultimately inside information. “The embassy represents only a small part of the total espionage threat from China – we need to be more careful about where the real dangers come from and when to be lenient and when to be assertive,” a former senior Whitehall official said.