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

While there has been no shortage of politicians eager to raise concerns about China’s proposed “mega embassy” near the Tower of London, the espionage community quietly takes a different view, arguing that concerns about the development are exaggerated and misplaced.The domestic Security Service, MI5, is already quietly welcoming the prospect of rationalising China’s seven diplomatic sites to one, but a more significant argument is that modern technology and the nature of the Chinese threat means that, in the words of one former British intelligence officer, “embassies are less and less relevant”.Spies have long operated from diplomatic outposts, posing as officials or trade envoys. If, as is expected, China is granted planning permission this month to build a new embassy complex at Royal Mint Court, it will employ over 200 people. All are expected to be Chinese nationals, in line with Beijing’s normal policy, from the lowest kitchen porter to the ambassador, with residences provided on site.As is the case now with its smaller existing embassy on Portland Place, north of Oxford Circus, among them will be a handful of undeclared officers from its ministry of state security (MSS) and military intelligence. According to one former MI6 officer, “they will be acting as ‘radars’, highlighting contacts of potential interest, getting to know people,” all of which are routine intelligence tasks.Yet it will not be easy for any of them to engage in the “serious business of espionage”, the former officer argued, not least because any embassy would be a “magnet for attention and surveillance”. A single site, officials have argued, makes that task easier, allowing MI5 to monitor the activities of Chinese officials, if needed, as they conduct themselves across the UK.It is also a psychological warning, subtler than the embassy-monitoring techniques used by China and Russia in their own back yard. British diplomats who have worked in Beijing or Moscow already operate on the premise they are watched and monitored digitally 24 hours a day. “You have to assume your life is not your own,” said John Foreman, a former UK defence attache to Moscow in the run-up to the start of the war in Ukraine.“I’d chat to my opposite number in Beijing and we’d try to work out who of the two of us was most followed,” Foreman said. Every time he left the British embassy in the Russian capital he would be tailed. If it was on foot, by a couple of people; if it was by car, “there could be as many as four, because I was a defence attache”.Russian agents would “point thinly concealed listening devices at you if you sat in a cafe,” the former attache said. They would also track planned movements on his phone, adding that “they were quicker to find you if you used a Russian app rather than Google”. The whole aim was to put pressure on people, to the point where they lost their judgment. “Some people got so intimidated they wouldn’t leave the embassy, which was the point.”Critics of the planned Chinese embassy argue that it is the greater size of the new development that poses key problems. “More state employees from the People’s Republic of China equals more Chinese interference,” said Luke de Pulford, the executive director of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, pointing to a US decision to shut a Chinese consulate in Houston in 2020 as an example.The diplomatic mission in Texas, comprising of 60 employees, was shut suddenly on US orders in July 2020 towards the end of the first Trump administration amid accusations that it was a base for planned intellectual property theft, in particular of medical research during the coronavirus pandemic, and that it was a location for the coercion of Chinese citizens wanted in their homeland.A second concern was highlighted in the Daily Telegraph last week. Publicly available floor plans for the embassy had been heavily redacted, but the newspaper obtained the full floor plans, revealing 208 previously blacked-out rooms, including a “hidden chamber” near high speed internet cables running through the adjacent street. The cabling, the newspaper suggested, could be at risk of being tapped underground.It is understood that the full plans were well known to the security services as part of the planning process, now led by the communities secretary, Steve Reed. Insiders add that even though the Royal Mint Court site is roughly between London’s two financial districts in the City and Canary Wharf, the concerns about cabling are exaggerated. “Traffic can be re-rerouted and, if necessary, cabling removed,” an official said.However, recent espionage incidents in the UK demonstrate that China does not run key intelligence operations out of embassies. Much of Beijing’s spying activity is conducted from China – from where it has hacked into global phone networks, in the Salt Typhoon episode. Pressure placed on researchers at Sheffield Hallam University to halt research about human rights abuses in China was conducted in Beijing.Three recent attempts by China to interfere in the Westminster parliament have all been conducted outside the embassy. Christine Lee, an Anglo-Chinese lawyer, was accused of trying to covertly cultivate “relationships with influential figures” in 2022 and subject of an MI5 warning. A parliamentary aide, Christopher Cash, was accused of passing sensitive information about Westminster to a friend, Christopher Berry, based in China, though a prosecution of the two collapsed.Two recruitment consultants based in China, Amanda Qiu and Shirly Shen, were accused by MI5 of using LinkedIn to try to recruit MPs and peers to obtain “non-public and insider insights” and, ultimately, insider information. “The embassy is only a small part of the total espionage threat from China; we need to be more alert to where the real dangers are coming from, when to be permissive and when to be assertive,” a former senior Whitehall official said.