{"id":74600,"date":"2025-10-04T15:00:06","date_gmt":"2025-10-04T06:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2025\/oct\/04\/china-mega-embassy-dilemma-starmer"},"modified":"2025-10-04T15:00:06","modified_gmt":"2025-10-04T06:00:06","slug":"starmer-on-horns-of-dilemma-over-chinas-seven-year-mega-embassy-saga","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=74600","title":{"rendered":"Starmer on horns of dilemma over China\u2019s seven-year mega-embassy saga"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Decision time is coming after Labour called in the planning application for the new building in east London<\/p>\n<p>In 2018, a prime piece of real estate near the Tower of London that was once home to a Cistercian abbey and later became the historic manufacturing site for British coins was sold to the Chinese government.<\/p>\n<p>The \u00a3255m deal, brokered by Eddie Lister, one of Boris Johnson\u2019s closest aides, provided China with a site to build a new diplomatic complex stretching across 20,000 square metres. China\u2019s then ambassador, Liu Xiaoming, expressed hopes that the deal would \u201cwrite a new chapter for a China-UK golden era\u201d.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2025\/oct\/04\/china-mega-embassy-dilemma-starmer\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Decision time is coming after Labour called in the planning application for the new building in east LondonIn 2018, a prime piece of real estate near the Tower of London that was once home to a Cistercian abbey and later became the historic manufacturi&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4155,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[50,319,902,215,3412,4,52],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-74600","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-china","category-foreign-policy","category-labour","category-london","category-planning-policy","category-politics","category-uk-news"],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74600","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4155"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=74600"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74600\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":74601,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74600\/revisions\/74601"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=74600"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=74600"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=74600"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}