{"id":584561,"date":"2025-11-21T11:05:13","date_gmt":"2025-11-21T11:05:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/584561\/"},"modified":"2025-11-21T11:05:13","modified_gmt":"2025-11-21T11:05:13","slug":"uk-expected-to-approve-plans-for-chinese-mega-embassy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/584561\/","title":{"rendered":"UK expected to approve plans for Chinese mega embassy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Since winning the general election last year, Labour has sought to thaw the UK’s relationship with Beijing.<\/p>\n

Chancellor Rachel Reeves, Business Secretary Peter Kyle and the most senior civil servant in the Foreign Office, Sir Olly Robbins, have all been on visits to China.<\/p>\n

The prime minister is expected to make his own trip to the country, perhaps as soon as early next year.<\/p>\n

Asked about the prospect of heading there, he told reporters en route to the G20 Summit in Johannesburg, South Africa, that no visit was confirmed yet.<\/p>\n

He said the government’s approach to China “is the same approach as we’ve always taken, which is cooperate where we can and challenge where we must, particularly on national security”.<\/p>\n

Critics say the government is insufficiently hard-headed about what they see as the threat posed by Beijing, and argue for a much greater caution in the UK’s relationship.<\/p>\n

Dame Priti said: “It beggars belief that Starmer is jetting off to Beijing just months after the case against the alleged Chinese spies collapsed on his watch.”<\/p>\n

She added: “Keir Starmer is so weak, and our economy so precarious, that Labour feels it must kowtow to China at every opportunity, regardless of the cost to our country.”<\/p>\n

In September a case involving two men – including a former parliamentary researcher – who were accused of spying for China collapsed in controversial circumstances<\/a>. Both men denied wrongdoing.<\/p>\n

Prosecutors said the case was dropped because they could not get evidence from the government referring to China as a national security threat.<\/p>\n

However, ministers insisted they were frustrated it collapsed and blamed the position of the previous Conservative government, as well as out-of-date national security legislation.<\/p>\n

Earlier this week MI5 issued an alert to MPs and peers, warning they faced a significant risk of spying from the Chinese state.<\/p>\n

The alert said individuals working on behalf of the Chinese Ministry of State Security were posing as “headhunters” on platforms like LinkedIn and targeting people working in British politics to obtain insider information.<\/p>\n

China has rejected claims of espionage as “pure fabrication”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Since winning the general election last year, Labour has sought to thaw the UK’s relationship with Beijing. Chancellor…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":584562,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[13,12,14],"class_list":{"0":"post-584561","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-stories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115587365296815729","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/584561","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=584561"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/584561\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/584562"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=584561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=584561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=584561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}