Britain’s hardening stance on China

IT WILL BE a more fitting home for a rising superpower than the delegation’s current poky premises in Marylebone. Overlooking the Tower of London, the fine Georgian buildings of the old Royal Mint, where Britain’s coins and medals were once struck, are to become the new Chinese embassy. Plans lodged with the local council outline a vast complex designed by David Chipperfield, the architect behind the renovated Neues Museum in Berlin, which includes 230 flats. Announcing the new base in 2018, Liu Xiaoming, the then ambassador, declared it to be a “fresh golden fruit” of a new “golden era” of ties.

That followed the era of David Cameron, who wanted Britain to be China’s “best partner in the West”. Today, exchanges are more steely than golden. Under Boris Johnson, Britain’s stance has hardened dramatically, and now hews more closely to America’s. “What has really surprised me is the speed of the degeneration between the two countries,” says Yu Jie, a senior research fellow at Chatham House, a think-tank.