UK Security Service Backs China Embassy, “Yellow Camp” Stalls Out

UK security agencies have quietly pulled the plug on the scare stories. MI5 and MI6 have signalled they are comfortable with China’s new “super embassy” in London going ahead, undercutting months of hype from emigrated “Yellow Camp” activists and anti-China politicians who tried seven times to turn this planning dispute into a rerun of the 2019 street movement. Their own organisers now admit this latest London protest was the “final show,” with only a few hundred people turning up as the political reality in Britain moves on.

The core criticism has been that this “super embassy” could act as an intelligence hub simply because it sits near a British Telecom exchange and several data centres. Anti-China politicians took that proximity and spun it into a full-blown security scare, while emigrated “Yellow Camp” supporters piled on with unsubstantiated claims that the new embassy would somehow monitor Hong Kong people living in the UK, despite offering no verifiable evidence.

MI5 and MI6 have cleared China’s new London embassy plan, giving Keir Starmer the cover to sign off and head to China early next year.

From panic to green light

The protesters bet that MI5 (the Security Service) and MI6 (the Secret Intelligence Service) would mirror their rhetoric, condemn the project, and force the Labour government to kill the plan in the name of national security. If that gamble had paid off, the new embassy could have been strangled at the planning stage and turned into a trophy for the anti-China camp.

Instead, that narrative ran straight into a brick wall once the professionals finished their review. As reported by British media such as The Times and the BBC, is that both MI5 and MI6 have given the plan their blessing, with the Home Office and Foreign Office also indicating they can live with it as long as established security safeguards are in place. Officials are now preparing formal responses, but the direction of travel is clear: once the security services say the risks are manageable, the political case for blocking the embassy collapses.

According to leaks reported in The Guardian, a senior MI5 official responsible for domestic security told Commons Speaker Lindsay Hoyle that the agency is “very relaxed” about China building this new embassy in London because it believes it can handle any associated risks.

MI5 Director General Ken McCallum has publicly framed the potential espionage risks of the new embassy as something they could handle, stressing that MI5 has “more than a century of experience” in monitoring and responding to such threats. That is a polite way of saying: there are tools and methods to ensure the site cannot simply be turned into a spying free-for-all.

On the foreign intelligence side, former MI6 operations and intelligence chief Nigel Inkster has also been quoted explaining that China, like many other states, increasingly avoids using embassies and consulates for espionage because counterintelligence technology has made such operations inside diplomatic missions far more risky and detectable. This undercuts the popular storyline pushed by anti-China voices that every Chinese diplomatic building is automatically a spy base.

Government sources have indicated that, in discussions with the Home Office and Foreign Office, both agencies have made clear they can manage any national security risks, so the departments see no reason to stand in the way. With the security “gatekeepers” effectively waving the plan through, the remaining political barriers are falling one by one.

Starmer’s Calculations

For Starmer, having the security services onside removes a major excuse used by opponents to delay decisions on China. His team knows that a visit to China early next year, framed around trade, finance, and stabilising ties, will be politically easier if the embassy issue is resolved rather than festering. Beijing has already registered strong dissatisfaction with the repeated delays, which began under previous governments and have chipped away at trust.

 There is also a basic reciprocity issue: the British Embassy in Beijing needs renovation and modernisation, something UK diplomats themselves have pressed for. If London blocks or endlessly drags its feet on China’s new embassy, Beijing has every reason to respond in kind to British plans.

No suspense left

Once MI5 and MI6 have effectively signed off, and with the Home Office and Foreign Office lined up behind a risk-managed approval, the political “mystery” around whether Starmer will give formal consent is rapidly disappearing. His signature on the plan now looks like a matter of timing and procedure, not principle.

For the emigrated “Yellow Camp,” the message is blunt: when Britain’s own security agencies decline to endorse their alarmist narrative, their campaign loses its core claim to credibility. After seven attempts to create a London-style copy of the “Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill movement,” with turnout dwindling and results empty, their ability to mobilise in the UK has clearly taken a heavy hit.

Seven loud London protests in a row, Hong Kong BNO holders and anti-China politicians are empty-handed – the embassy plan is still going ahead.

As for the Anti-China politicians, they have been weaponising this planning case for months. An attempt to not only slow or block the embassy but to box Starmer into a hostile posture toward China as well. Plus, they get to rally fringe separatist networks around Tibet and Xinjiang. That strategy depends on painting China as a unique, unmanageable security threat even when the UK’s own legal processes and intelligence assessments say otherwise.

If Starmer stands his ground and pushes the project over the line on the strength of professional security advice, it will take the wind out of the anti‑China camp’s sails in London.

Lai Ting-yiu

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The most consequential national security trial yet to come is also the one with the most unanswered questions — and at the centre of it is a man who almost made it out.

Monday (Feb 23) was "Renri" (人日) — the seventh day of the Lunar New Year, meant to be a day of celebration for all people. But for the 12 defendants in the "35+ Subversion Case," there was nothing to celebrate. The Court of Appeal dismissed all their appeals against both conviction and sentencing in full. Unless they push it all the way to the Court of Final Appeal, this case is done. That brings two of the three major national security cases to a close — the other being the Jimmy Lai trial. What remains is the Joshua Wong case, expected to go to trial around mid-year. Like Lai's, it reaches into the highest levels of American politics, and it will almost certainly expose a trove of behind-the-scenes dealings that will shake Hong Kong to its core. The trial is close enough that the details don't need spelling out here. But one mystery absolutely does: Wong was once Washington's darling — so why did he never make it out, while his co-conspirator Nathan Law did? An investigative report by American journalists cracked open the story.

Wong's trial is the last big national security case standing — and the most explosive one yet. How did he never make it out?

Wong's role in the Occupy Central movement and the 2019 unrest needs no introduction. In June last year, while already serving a prison term at Stanley Prison on sedition charges, he was arrested again and charged under the Hong Kong National Security Law with conspiracy to collude with foreign forces to endanger national security. His second pre-trial review at the Magistrates' Court came on 21 November last year, with the next hearing set for 6 March; the full trial at the High Court is expected to begin around mid-year. This case carries weight every bit as significant as the Jimmy Lai trial — the spotlight it commands will be enormous.

The Charges Are Grave

The prosecution alleges that between July and November 2020, Wong — together with Nathan Law and others yet to be identified — conspired in Hong Kong to solicit foreign governments and institutions to impose sanctions against the Hong Kong SAR and the People's Republic of China, and to seriously obstruct the government in enacting and enforcing its laws and policies. The charges carry a potential sentence of life imprisonment. What exactly Wong and Law did, and which foreign officials were involved, the prosecution will lay out in full when the trial begins.

The public has long asked some uncomfortable questions. Did Joshua Wong ever consider fleeing before or after the National Security Law came into force at the end of June 2020? If so, why did it never happen? Did the US government try to help him get out? An investigative report by two American journalists answered part of the puzzle — and sources familiar with the matter, when contacted by Hong Kong media, broadly confirmed what it said.

Wong Begged Washington for Help

The night before the National Security Law took effect, Wong reached out through a senator's adviser to appeal directly to President Trump for help. At the same time, he sent an email to then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, explicitly asking to be helped to "travel to the United States to seek political asylum, by whatever means necessary". That email tells you everything. Wong knew exactly how dangerous his situation had become — and he was betting his future on American goodwill.

  

Around the same time, Wong arranged to meet two officials from the US Consulate General in Hong Kong at St. John's Building, directly across the street from the consulate. He made clear he wanted to walk in and seek refuge. He was turned away on the spot. When Pompeo saw the email, he consulted with his staff and arrived at the same conclusion: letting Wong through the consulate doors was simply not an option — Washington feared Beijing would retaliate by forcing the US consulate in Hong Kong to close entirely.

State Department officials went further, exploring a covert plan to smuggle Wong out of Hong Kong by sea — routing him through Taiwan or the Philippines before eventually reaching the United States. That option was killed too, on the grounds that any such attempt would very likely be intercepted by Chinese authorities, triggering a diplomatic crisis. When the accounting was done, American interests won out — and Joshua Wong was coldly abandoned.

By that point, Nathan Law had already made it out. Seizing Pompeo's visit to London, Law met the Secretary of State privately and raised the question of rescuing Wong one more time — and was once again turned away without sympathy. In September 2020, Wong was arrested on sedition charges and imprisoned two months later. Any remaining window for escape had sealed shut.

Law Moved Fast — and Made It

 

Nathan Law is named as a co-conspirator in the charges against Wong — meaning that if arrested, they face the same jeopardy. But Law proved far more calculating than Wong. Shortly before the National Security Law took effect, he quietly slipped away, eventually confirming his presence in the United Kingdom on 13 July 2020. He even staged a moment of wistful sentiment, declaring: "With this parting, I do not yet know when I shall return... May glory come soon!" — words that, in the circumstances, could not have sounded more hollow.

Same charges, same case — but Law ran, and Wong didn't. One man made it out clean. The other is still paying the price.

Joshua Wong — sharp-witted all his life — took one step too many in trusting the Americans, and that delay cost him everything. The US government, in the name of "national interest," discarded him without hesitation. As his trial approaches, the reality is this: placing any further faith in American support would be the last illusion he can afford.

Lai Ting-yiu