The British government announced on Friday that it has extended until October its decision on approving China’s plans for what would be Europe’s largest embassy in London, after Beijing declined to fully clarify the blacked-out sections of its proposal.
China’s plans to build a new embassy on the site of a two-century-old building near the Tower of London have stalled for the past three years because of opposition from local residents, lawmakers, and Hong Kong pro-democracy campaigners in Britain.
Politicians in Britain and the U.S. have warned the government against allowing China to build the embassy on the site over concerns that it could be used as a base for spying.
DP9, the planning consultancy working for the Chinese government, said its client felt it would be inappropriate to provide full internal layout plans, saying additional drawings provided an acceptable level of detail, after the government asked why several areas were blacked out in drawings.
“The Applicant considers the level of detail shown on the unredacted plans is sufficient to identify the main uses,” DP9 said in a letter to the government.
“In these circumstances, we consider it is neither necessary nor appropriate to provide additional more detailed internal layout plans or details.”
Final Decision By October
The British government’s department of housing said in reply it would now rule on whether the project can go ahead by October 21 rather than by September 9 because it needed more time to consider the responses.
Luke de Pulford, executive director of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, a group with ties to an international network of politicians critical of China which revealed the letter, said: “These explanations are far from satisfactory.”
De Pulford, a long-standing critic of plans for the embassy, said the “assurances amount to ‘trust me bro'”.
The Chinese embassy in London did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The embassy earlier this month said claims that the building could have “secret facilities” used to harm Britain’s national security were “despicable slandering”.
The Chinese government purchased Royal Mint Court in 2018 but its requests for planning permission to build the new embassy there were rejected by the local council in 2022. Chinese President Xi Jinping asked Prime Minister Keir Starmer last year to intervene.
Starmer’s central government took control of the planning decision last year.
(With inputs from Reuters)
