A decision on China’s proposed mega embassy in London is expected on Monday or Tuesday, with Chinese officials and British diplomats in Beijing holding their breath in anticipation of the planning application finally being approved. The saga, which has been running since 2018, is widely expected to end with the British government giving the green light for construction. If it does, one group likely to be grateful is those who work in the British embassy’s dilapidated building in Beijing. The UK’s plans to redevelop its outpost in China’s capital have…
Tag: Politics
China’s London super-embassy almost certain to get go-ahead next week
A vast new Chinese embassy complex in east London is almost certain to be formally approved next week despite renewed worries among Labour MPs about potential security risks and the effect on Hong Kong and Uighur exiles in the capital. The green light for the super-embassy at Royal Mint Court near Tower Bridge would smooth relations before Keir Starmer’s visit to China, which is expected to take place at the end of January, but officials insist there has been no political input in the planning process. It would be a…
Tories call for block on Chinese super-embassy amid claims of hidden chamber near sensitive cables – UK politics live
From 50m ago ‘Frankly insanity’ – Tories claim plan revelations show why Labour should block Chinese ‘super-embassy’ plan Responding to Pennycook, Alicia Kearns, a shadow Home Office minister, said she was disappointed by the fact that she just got a “technocratic history lesson” from the minister. She went on: 208 secret rooms and a hidden chamber just one metre from cable serving City of London and the British people. That is what the unredacted plans tell us that the Chinese Communist Party has planned for its new embassy if the…
China threatened to cancel key trade talks after UK minister’s Taiwan visit in June
China threatened to cancel high-level trade talks with the UK earlier this year over a government minister’s visit to Taiwan, the Guardian can disclose. Beijing told the British government it would pull its first trade and economic dialogue with the UK in seven years after Douglas Alexander, then a trade minister, travelled to Taipei in late June. The engagement threatened to scupper the UK-China trade and economic commission (Jetco), which ultimately did go ahead after diplomats privately scrambled to contain the diplomatic fallout with Beijing. Peter Kyle flew to China…
China forecast to have sold one in every 10 new cars in UK in 2025
Chinese brands are on course to account for one in every 10 new cars sold in Britain during 2025, a marked increase on last year as sales increase across Europe. Manufacturers led by MG, BYD, and Chery are on track to break the 200,000 mark in UK new car sales in 2025, meaning they are very likely to account for 10% of the market, according to Matthias Schmidt, an analyst tracking electric cars across Europe. Spain and Norway also get a tenth of their new cars from Chinese brands, with…
Through the lens of history, Trump’s legacy will be more of a blotch than a Maga masterpiece | Simon Tisdall
For those who lived through the cold war, the fall of the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989, was an unforgettable moment. The sinister watch towers with their searchlights and armed guards, the minefields in no-man’s land, the notorious Checkpoint Charlie border post, and the Wall itself – all were swept aside in an extraordinary, popular lunge for freedom. Less than a month later, on 3 December 1989, at a summit in Malta, US president George HW Bush and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev declared that after more than 40 years,…
The best of the long read in 2025
Victor Pelevin made his name in 90s Russia with scathing satires of authoritarianism. But while his literary peers have faced censorship and fled the country, he still sells millions. Has he become a Kremlin apologist? At 18, Mustafa was told his only way out of prison was to join the regime forces. After 14 years, his past as one of Assad’s fighters could get him killed When fossilised remains were discovered in the Djurab desert in 2001, they were hailed as radically rewriting the history of our species. But not…
China has set a bear trap for Keir Starmer – and our naive PM is walking straight into it | Simon Tisdall
The UK pushed hard to secure the release of Jimmy Lai, the newspaper publisher and British citizen who was a leading light in Hong Kong’s brutally suppressed pro-democracy movement. So, too, did press freedom and human rights campaigners. But the Beijing-appointed high court judges in the former colony convicted him anyway, finding Lai guilty last week on fake charges of trying to “destabilise” the Chinese Communist party (CCP). For Xi Jinping, China’s dictator-emperor, there is no greater crime. Protesting to China’s ambassador, the UK’s foreign secretary, Yvette Cooper, condemned the…
UK Foreign Office victim of cyber-attack in October, says Chris Bryant
The UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office was hacked in October, the minister Chris Bryant has said. Bryant, a trade minister in Keir Starmer’s government, told Sky News there was a low risk to “any individual” from the cyber-attack. Details of the hack emerged on Friday in a report by the Sun that claimed a Chinese hacker group was behind the cyber-attack. However, Bryant told broadcasters it was “not clear” who perpetrated the attack and cautioned against speculation. “There certainly has been a hack at the FCDO and we’ve been…
How far must UK go to fend off threat of foreign interference in its elections?
Russia has been attempting to meddle with western democracy for years, but successive governments led by Boris Johnson and others have insisted that the UK’s electoral system can withstand its influence. That argument was recently blown apart by the conviction of former Reform politician Nathan Gill, jailed for 10 years for accepting bribes to advance Russian arguments. And now Steve Reed, the cabinet minister responsible for elections, has admitted there are worries that the UK’s “firewall” against foreign interference may not be strong enough as he ordered an independent review.…