Security concerns over China's new embassy in London

Interview with Michael Clarke, Sky News

Part of the show China's new London embassy, and screen-time retards speech

We begin with reports that China’s London-based diplomats could soon move to a new home in the east of the capital. It’s been dubbed a “mega-embassy” - but there are concerns that the plans include secret rooms and a "concealed chamber" that sit alongside cables carrying data to the City of London. These details were redacted from plans originally submitted to London’s authorities, but revealed earlier this week when the Daily Telegraph published what they say are copies of the originals that reveal these formerly hidden details. Michael Clarke used to work for the Royal United Services Institute think-tank, and he’s now a defence and security analyst. Chris Smith asked him what he makes of it…

Michael - The Chinese want to have a new embassy in London. They're based in a traditional embassy, and they have lots of other facilities around the capital, and they want to bring them all together in a new embassy. And it was suggested that they might take over the old Royal Mint building, which is right opposite Tower Bridge; it's a very iconic part of London, it's a very clear crossroads of the great tourist industry. And the Royal Mint building is very large, and this would be, after adaptation, the largest embassy in Europe that the Chinese have got. I think it would be the largest single embassy in Europe; it would be bigger than the American embassy in London, and it would consolidate all of China's diplomatic work in one place. The thing that has bothered a lot of security service people is that it would sit on top of all of the cables that go in and out of the City of London, which is just to the east of this area, and those cables carry the most sensitive and the density of economic material, both consumer material plus some of the most important economic data that flows backwards and forwards by the trillion bits every day. And the Chinese have refused to allow plans of the embassy, the new embassy, to be completely transparent. They've got secret rooms in there that they refuse to reveal why they are there, and for the plans to be really investigated, and the Chinese have made it a big issue to say that unless you allow us to have this embassy, there will be diplomatic consequences for Britain, and it looks as if Britain is about to agree.

Chris - What might be the risks?

Michael - Well, I think the proximity to the data cables is probably not the most important issue. Undoubtedly, the Chinese will try to get into those cables because they do, and they hack all of our material all of the time, and one of the arguments is if we're worried about the personal data of our banking details, well, they've already got those, they've had them for years, because they do, they just, they hoover up every scrap of personal information they can about every society that they're involved with. Even though they can't analyse it, they keep it all so that with the use of AI in future years, they'll be able to go through it. So they've got mountains of haystacks, and they will be able - not yet, but at some point - be able to trawl for the needles in all those mountainous haystacks that they've got. I think the bigger issue is not so much the cables, because the security services have said that they can live with that. The other issue is that what we're dealing with here is a Chinese society which is by nature totalitarian, which is to say it believes in the total control of its people and what they should think as well as what they're allowed to think, and it extends that control to Chinese abroad, because they recognise that in the modern world, in the globalised world, if China is to exert the power it plans to exert, then Chinese individuals will need to be everywhere in the world, as engineers, as foreign nationals, as students, as visitors, as tourists, and they want them all to be potentially under their control. And this building, which will be bigger than Buckingham Palace, this building will act as a symbol of the power of the Beijing government over the Chinese communities of all types that come and go or live permanently in Britain.

Chris - The size aside, how is this different, though, from what could be going on in any other country's embassy in London?

Michael - This is not in principle different to what is going on elsewhere, and it's not in principle different to what the Chinese are already doing in all of the different buildings that they occupy in different parts of London. And some of the people in the security services are believed to think, well, if they all exist in one place, it's easier for us to monitor them. We can listen to them just as they can listen to us. I'd be very surprised if their cables were completely immune to being hacked, just as the cables in the city are not immune to being hacked. And of course, yes, the Chinese do this all over the world; they do it in other cities, but it looks as if the Chinese view the future as one in which London is a hub for their activities. And you could say, well, that's either a good thing for London's reputation because it proves that London is quite an important city in Europe, or you could say it's a bad thing for London's reputation because it proves that the British government is easier to cajole than other European governments.

Chris - Is it normal, though, for embassies and overseas government infrastructure to, when they submit plans, to redact big chunks of it? I mean, if China are doing something that everybody else does, then that's perfectly reasonable for them to do that, isn't it?

Michael - No, it's not normal. When a government looks at plans for an embassy, it's got a right to know what the building is going to be and what it's going to be used for. Of course, that use may be changed, but this happens all the time, and the Chinese, for instance, are bringing pressure to bear. So, the British embassy in Beijing, when the plumbing fails, the Chinese won't allow British plumbers or plumbers that the embassy approves of to come in and fix it. So we've got plumbing that is being left unfixed because they're saying, well, only our plumbers are allowed into your embassy to fix your lavatories. And of course, nobody trusts Chinese nationals coming into the British embassy. And so this sort of erodes the rights of embassies to function as the sovereign territory of their governments. And what the Chinese are here requiring, demanding, is that they get sovereign territory in this new embassy, but at an enhanced level that other countries would not be allowed.

Chris - What do you think the reaction is going to be? People are saying that the diplomatic cost will be greater. Therefore, we should wave it through.

Michael - I think that's the view the government is taking, and Keir Starmer is due to go to China later on this year, and that will be a very important visit in terms of Britain's economic development and inward investment into Britain. Undoubtedly, if this decision on the embassy is not taken or is taken in a way that the Chinese don't like, that visit will be cancelled. And I'm fairly certain, I can't prove this, but I'm fairly certain in my own mind, the Chinese are now saying, you've got to make the decision, make it now, and then your visit will go ahead. But if you delay the decision or you make it in a negative way, then the visit won't go ahead. And the government, I think, are taking the view that overall, it is better to let this go ahead, and we can take the hit to our dignity over the longer term.