American Thought Leaders - Is China’s Mega Embassy in London Actually a Spying Compound? | Luke de Pulford

Episode Date: August 15, 2026

💰Protect your wealth with precious metals! Call American Hartford Gold today & get up to $20,000 in free silver on your 1st order! Call 855-862-3377 or text AMERICAN to 65532 or click here: https://ept.ms/ATL-AHG The largest Chinese embassy in Europe is set to rise in the heart of London: a 20,000-square-meter complex at Royal Mint Court.Local councilors rejected it twice. But the government approved it, and a High Court challenge from residents was dismissed this summer.Standing against it is Luke de Pulford, founder of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC)—an international coalition of lawmakers opposing Chinese Communist Party infiltration.Why does this embassy matter, and why should America care?The site sits directly above fiber-optic cables carrying sensitive financial data between the City of London and Canary Wharf, Britain’s two main financial districts. The architectural drawings are also redacted.“Nearly an entire floor is redacted, so we don’t know what the use of those buildings is, and some of those rooms are in the basement area,” de Pulford says.“If the Chinese were able to, in some way, sabotage or hack this cabling. … They would be impacting any financial services from anywhere in the world who are located in those two financial centers, which of course includes the United States.”MI5 lists China as one of the most serious national security threats facing the UK. So why was the embassy approved?“It’s partly down to the leverage that China exacts, it’s partly down to the carrots that it dangles around economic opportunities, and it’s partly down to the blunt coercion it’s willing to mete out,” de Pulford says.This episode looks at what can still be done to stop the project, why it’s being called the last line of defense, and what it takes to resist communist infiltration from within.Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

They wanted to build the largest embassy in Europe, a massive fortress for the Communist Party right in the center of London. Once this thing is going to finalize, it becomes effectively sovereign territory for the CCP. Well, let me shock you, Yan. It's already sovereign territory in UK law. In this episode, I sit down with Luke DePalford, founder and president of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China to understand what's really going on with China's mega embassy plan and what it means for America. Nearly an entire floor is redacted, so we don't know what the use of those buildings are. Some of those people who had received bounties also received letters saying, we are going to drag you into the embassy.

And that might seem hyperbolic until you realize that the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office was being used to fund people to harass dissidents. The UK High Court recently dismissed a legal complaint against the U.K. the embassy. Really at the very heart of the political system and political culture is control. It exists to protect itself, the party. And to that end, it must exert control at any cost. This is American Thought Leaders, and I'm Janja Kellogg. Luke DePulford, such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders. Pleasure to be here.

In the UK, we're here. We've heard about this mega embassy now for quite some time. And the courts in the UK have basically given it the go-ahead just a few days ago as we're recording, which frankly to me was quite astonishing, giving some of the evidence that you've presented that this is a bit of a big deal. So two things. What is this? First of all, this mega embassy, explain that and also like what is it that we can learn here in America and in Canada about how the CCP operates? Okay. This is a huge topic. and I've been very deep in it for years now. So I'm going to do my best to summarize.

So this mega embassy, what is it? It is going to be the largest embassy in the whole of Europe in London, but it's not going to one of the many allies of the United Kingdom. It's going to an adversary of the United Kingdom in the Communist Party of China. We've been fighting this for a long time, led very ably, it has to be said, by the residents of that area who have been a bulwark against this thing. But it's been a mess from the beginning.

Back in 2018, then Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson gave permission for this thing. At least he gave the land to the Chinese. They bought it at a discount price. Even that was pretty dodgy. But then what happened was the Chinese had to apply for planning permission. And of course, this very prestigious site, they didn't want to just build a normal embassy on it. They wanted to build the largest embassy in Europe, a massive fortress for the Communist Party right in the centre of London.

So they submitted this application and it was refused by Tower Hamlets Council. If you don't know what that is, this is a little council authority that oversees that area of London. So quite interesting. I don't know what they must have made of that in Beijing, having their permission initially refused. But then they applied again. And the government did something unusual, which was what we call a call-a-call-a-call-

in the decision. So they took the decision over. They took it away from the council because they thought, oh, well, they're just going to refuse it again. So the government decided at the beginning of this year to give the green light to the mega embassy after years of debate and campaigning on our side, many organizations campaigning against this thing. We then sued the government, and that is the court judgment that you're talking about now. The High Court just found against us. This is very complicated. I'm not going to go into too much detail, but in essence we had to prove that the UK government's decision in allowing the embassy was unlawful. That's what we would have to do in order to stop this thing. We did not succeed at the High Court and now we are seeking to appeal. What I would say to try to give people a little bit of encouragement is that we expected that. This is the kind of significant decision that needs to go to the higher courts really in order to stand a chance of winning. So the next stage, if we succeed, will be the court of appeal. And if we don't succeed at the court of appeal, the stage after that will be the Supreme Court.

Happily, the residents and campaigners are willing to fight this all the way. But your listeners should know this is the only way of stopping this mega embassy now. So why should the United States care about it? Why should anybody care about it? A couple of reasons. The first thing is that this thing is huge and the size matters. because we were criticized. Some people said, well, you know, buildings don't spy on people. Who cares if it's a big building? What's the problem? The answer is that where you see more Chinese

state employees, you see more Chinese state interference. That regrettably has been the evidence of the last few years especially. And it's very difficult to ignore. We've just seen two convictions in the United Kingdom of people who are harassing dissidents having been paid through the Hong Kong economic and trade office. So this is a serious pressing real problem and in the UK. So this building accounts for more than 200 extra flats in addition to a huge area. So we're talking a lot more Chinese diplomats and that means a lot more Chinese interference. It means a lot more Chinese surveillance and attempted control of dissident and diasporic communities and we do not want it. So we should oppose it for that reason alone. But why should the states care? Well, you may have

that it was exposed that there are some sensitive communication cable infrastructure, basically within feet of this mega embassy. This isn't just sensitive communication cabling. This is cabling that connects Canary Wharf to the city of London, the two financial centres in London, which means that if the Chinese were able to in some way sabotage or hack this cabling, that they wouldn't just that they wouldn't just be impacting United Kingdom financial services.

They would be impacting any financial services from anywhere in the world who are located in those two financial centres, which of course includes the United States. Now, I'll tell you, Jan, back in 2025, I came to Washington and I briefed various people, including the White House, on the presence of these cables, and said, you know, your financial services are going to be endangered by this. You need to lean in. We've got to stop this thing from happening. And there has been quite a lot of

activity since then, but it's not been enough to deter the United Kingdom from pressing ahead with this disastrous project. They are leaving it to a group of residents and campaigners to defend United Kingdom national security. Not only that, the stability of worldwide financial services is pretty extraordinary. I mean, this is a situation where, you know, you have multiple UK residents who have come from Hong Kong who literally have bounties on their head to the tune of a million Hong Kong dollars. And we're talking about putting the biggest possible diplomatic mission in Europe, right, into the center of London on top of sensitive financial cables. This just feels like it just doesn't make, it counters common sense. Is this struck you somehow? You're right. I mean,

The thing which is so disturbing about this is how easily the government has dismissed the concerns of those people. Some of those people who had received bounties also received letters saying, we are going to drag you into the embassy. And that might seem hyperbolic until you realize that the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office was being used to fund people to harass dissidents. They were convicted for that. This isn't allegedly.

They were convicted. Very difficult to get to that threshold in the UK courts. So it shows you this is a real and pressing problem. But to answer your point, why are they doing it? What's the real reason for this? Well, there are two reasons. One is that Beijing has made a priority of this thing. So in 2024, Xi Jinping himself said to then Prime Minister Kiyahir Stama, you've got to give

us this embassy. You know, I cannot think, by the way, of any precedent for a leader of a country demanding that there's a particular location given for their embassy. is highly unusual. So the CCP has made a real priority of this mega embassy. Well, why do we think that is? Because they want to have a very large base within London to project their power over the whole of Europe. It's very important to them. And not because they like the real estate, it's because they want to be able to build this huge monolith of a building as a control and command center for their operations in Europe. This is a deeply worrying thing. The second reason is a, that the United Kingdom has an embassy in Beijing, which is crumbling and has been seeking

permission for renovations for years. You will know enough about the Communist Party of China to know that that's a nice leverage point for them. So they have said that they will not permit the UK embassy in Beijing to be renovated until and unless they get permission for the mega embassy. This again is not me making it up. We managed to get hold of a letter from Boris Johnson in 2018, which mentions both of those things. It sells the building to the Chinese, and it says in that very letter, we hope, therefore, that the development of your embassy

and our embassy in Beijing will progress unimpeded. So that's what this is really about, Yan. If you're an American thought leader's regular, you know we spend a lot of time digging into the powerful forces trying to reshape America and the Western world. Everything from censorship and central banking to the growing economic pressure coming from Beijing. I'm not a financial advisor, but in uncertain times like these, owning something real, something you can hold, can provide stability and peace of mind. I myself am someone who likes to invest in gold because it's something that basically holds long-term value in a way that very few other things do.

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description below. One thing you mentioned was the spy activity increases associated with the size of embassies. You know, we had a Houston consulate closed down entirely back in 2020 here in the U.S. Because of, you know, outsize espionage work. So that's, it's also not a crazy idea that there's, that there's lots of spies. And also the other part that's very interesting to me, I mean, I haven't seen the blueprints myself, but I've spoken with people about the fact that in these proposed blueprints, there seems to be some very suspicious areas. And I'm wondering if you could comment on that. Yes, in fact, this was one of the grounds for our legal challenge. There are many, many redacted rooms.

And normally when you have plans for an embassy of this size, you describe what the rooms are for. So it's for the general building is for embassy use, of course, but what are the actual rooms for? Normally you have a description. Nearly an entire floor of this thing, and we're talking a huge building, nearly an entire floor is redacted. So we don't know what the use of those buildings are. And some of those rooms are in the basement area, and this is prompted people to speculate what it might be used for. The truth is that we don't know. But knowing the kinds of activities that the CCP gets up to around the world, I wouldn't put anything past them.

and not having an understanding of what's going on in that building, ought to be very worrisome for people, but particularly those targeted by Beijing. And that includes me and many other foreign lawmakers, foreign activists, but particularly at risk, are those people who are from China or from any territory associated with China. So, you know, this is real stuff.

Tell me a little bit about why you're targeted by Beijing. Well, I think it started when I got heavily involved with the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong. Around, I guess it must have been the turn of 2019, I started to get a lot of impersonation emails. So somebody was just pretending to be me, emailing family, friends, people they thought my colleagues and often weren't. And it was a low-level annoyance, to be honest with you. didn't ever take it that seriously. Although I have to say whoever this impersonator is is quite good, he successfully resigned my Conservative Party membership and that required him to phone up pretending to be me. Now this person was traced to Hong Kong, so pretty clear

what's going on there. But that I regard as pretty low-level harassment. There's also a lot of targeted online harassment to anybody who works within IPAC. But when the national security law was passed, much more serious stuff happened both to me and to IPAC. A volunteer with IPAC in the early days, a guy called Andy Lee, who helped to build IPAC's website, was arrested under the national security law in Hong Kong. Shortly thereafter, he tried to flee Hong Kong with 11 others to Taiwan. They were on a boat, and they were apprehended in Chinese waters. Andy was taken to Shenzhen, and he was tortured there.

After he was tortured, he was taken back to Hong Kong where he became a prosecution witness in the trial of Jimmy Lai. Now, I want to make this as clear as possible because it is very complicated. Andy, extremely good man, helped anybody who needed help, was never violent, only ever believed in supporting democracy. In fact, only ever really believed in upholding the promises the United Kingdom made to Hong Kong. You know, the Sino-British Joint Declaration, which was unilaterally torn to pieces by China. That's all Andy did. But they needed somebody who was connected to our work so they could blame Jimmy Lye for it. And they wanted him to become a prosecution witness so he could say in some way that Jimmy had been behind the whole IPAC project.

The reality is that Jimmy had nothing whatsoever to do with IPAC. Nothing. I'd exchanged a few text messages with him, which were always. read out in court during his trial. Some of it, like Alice threw the looking glass, ludicrous. I mean, there was one point where I'd sent him a tweet and I'd said, please RT. And he'd responded saying, what RT? For the benefit of your listeners, it means please retweet. Totally ridiculous. This was being read out in court as if this was a terribly criminal act. I barely knew the guy. But in Beijing, they need a big bad boss.

They needed to delegitimize the democracy movement in Hong Kong and they wanted to pin that on Jimmy Lai. But in order to pin that on Jimmy Lai, they needed somebody who was actually connected with international work to say that he was behind it. And that's where Andy came in. So I was named very extensively in both of those trials and named as a co-conspirator in the trial of Jimmy Lai. As a result of that, my own foreign officer called me in and warned me of potential extradition

to Hong Kong and China from third countries. There are about 50 something of those. So it's relatively serious stuff. They don't like me, they don't like IPAC, fairly regularly targeted by Chinese state media. But I do want to say, Yana, from my point of view, the targeting of me, even this targeting of some of the people around me or foreign lawmakers, it may seem to your listeners to be severe. And I suppose, you know, it's relatively serious.

We cannot compare it with the kind of repression that is faced by diaspora communities around the world whose families are used as leverage in order to shut them up. That for me is very much more serious, more worrying. I don't want to compare myself with those people, but we've certainly been on the receiving end of a certain amount of ire from Beijing. One of the things that I don't get to talk about enough is how Beijing kind of views people who are Han Chinese. or some of the minorities within its borders

as kind of their property in a way, or they have a right, some sort of jurisdiction over them that would go beyond people that they don't like, like yourself and me. And I'm wondering if you could speak to that a little bit. Well, I think there is an interesting point here. Most people don't know that Chinese law regarding citizenship is fundamentally racist, not just racist.

I mean, really terribly. draconian. For example, somebody who is born in China, let's say they move to the United Kingdom and they have children in the United Kingdom and their children's children are born in the United Kingdom. Their children's children's children will still be regarded by the Chinese Communist Party as Chinese and they will claim dominion over them, they will reject whatever nationality they have been given and they will assert Chinese law over the those people. This is an extraordinary situation for the international community to tolerate, but it does. It does. Jimmy Lai is a British citizen. He's not a dual national. It's a British

citizen. And the British government is unable to do anything for Jimmy Lai because China asserts that he's Chinese. They lured over him Chinese law and say, well, we'll judge you by Chinese law, you're Chinese. We're going to treat you that way. And it does that with many, many others. There are countless examples. The reason I think this is important is that it goes to the heart of the frankly ethno-nationalism of the Chinese Communist Party, the way that it understands Chinese identity, the increasing what people will call Han chauvinism at the heart of the Chinese Communist Party, the idea that there is a particular Chinese race, a particular understanding of the Chinese people,

which has to approximate a particular ethnicity. the Han ethnicity. That's the way that Beijing behaves. And we've just seen this be concretized in what they're calling the ethnic unity and progress law. A totally dystopian piece of legislation which enables them, gives them a legal basis to harass people abroad on the basis of their ethnicity. And we're not just talking about persecuting minority groups within China. They're going to do that too under this law. We're talking about simply assuming that because somebody is of the Han ethnicity, that they can and will be treated under Chinese law.

That is the policy of the Chinese Communist Party. Totally extraordinary, but the rest of the world just allows it. Well, and just my own reading of Article 63 of that law in particular, it sort of extends beyond even ethnicity, essentially extending to people that, you know, say things the Chinese Communist Party may not like. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the entire thing is constructed to try to control and suppress dissent. That's really what it's there for. And they want it to apply to everybody, much like the national security law in Hong Kong, which ludicrously claims extraterritorial jurisdiction.

They think that they can go after anyone, anywhere in the world, who says things that they believe to be contrary to national security, which is, as we know, a definition in Hong Kong that expands every day. But it means that even a foreign lawmaker at criticizing the national security law or saying things that Beijing doesn't like could violate either of those two laws, either the national security law in Hong Kong or the ethnic unity law in China. Shocking state of affairs, but that's, I think, yeah, it's worth dwelling on this because it's something which is misunderstood, I think, about the party state in China. People don't understand that really at the very heart of the political system and political

culture is control. They don't understand that. They think wrongly that it will behave and act like a normal government. It exists to protect itself, the party. And to that end, it must exert control at any cost, even at the cost of violating other people's laws, which we've seen them do routinely. It's something that's very important for people to understand, because unless you understand that, that at the heart of the thing is the continuance of the party state, is the protection

of the party, and the exacting of control in order to be able to do that, you will not understand it properly. And this is one of the mistakes that so many governments have made, you know, first of all, believing that China would open up with economic integration to the World Trade organization and then thinking somehow they would be able to, I don't know, through negotiations, sort of talk the Chinese Communist Party out of its very function. Its very function is to protect itself and to exact control. Luke, such powerful words, in fact, you know, I just wrote a book, killed to order, about the organ industry in communist China.

But a big chunk of the book is, in fact, talking about how this organ industry is in fact a window into the mind of the Chinese regime. And that window explores something that you put very succinctly just now. Yeah, I totally agree with you. And I'm very glad that you're doing the work that you're doing on organ harvesting. One of the most difficult areas of CCP rights abuses has been this persistent and widespread problem of state-sponsored organ harvesting. So difficult to raise awareness around it because it's such a hidden crime. as you know. But we also have the issue around the world, whereas democratic lawmakers have been able to talk about abuses in the northwest of China or in Hong Kong because they've been able to see them,

they've been able to read evidence which has proven it to them beyond doubt. It's so difficult to do that with organ harvesting and it's something which is crying out to heaven for more attention. And when it gets it and when the true state of what is happening in China is truly unmasked, I think that finally, finally people will see the party state and the evils that it's capable of for what they really are. You know, I spoke in the UK Parliament recently. Unfortunately, you weren't actually, you weren't in town on those days. But what I was told from that event is that the officials from the U.K.S. UK human tissue authority came in some significant numbers to this meeting for the first time,

which, you know, at least the BBC journalist who was telling me about this, he was sort of astonished that they were there, which indicated that this issue is getting a bit more prominent in the UK, thankfully, but sadly not a lot, not enough being done. And, you know, although there is legislation in the U.S. right now that has a good chance in the Senate. That's a whole different story. I wanted you to talk about a little bit about IPAC because I think a lot of people might not know what that is. I mean, just very briefly to give me a picture, you play a key role in this institution and I find it to be an incredibly important one. Thank you. Yeah, well, IPAC, the Interparliamentary Alliance from China was something that

I started building in 2020 with leading lawmakers initially from eight countries. And they included Well, then Senator Rubio, who went into government. The idea behind IPAC is that governments are not doing enough on China, and they're not doing enough on China because there is economic and diplomatic leverage. And I guess I came to the realization that the world's parliaments were an untapped resource. Lawmakers have a toolbox. They can table bills, they can table amendments, they can have debates, but they also have tremendous voice by virtue of the fact that they've been elected.

So the idea behind NYPAC was, well, it is a common realisation across political parties, across the democratic world that the Chinese Communist Party under Xi Jinping is presenting in some places almost existential challenges. We need to be able to face that. So we thought, okay, we'll bring this thing together. We will create a constitution that enables these lawmakers to work. work together in order to shift debate within democracies towards a more realistic posture on China.

So in a sentence, IPAC is basically parliamentary guerrilla warfare in order to try to shift thinking on China, to use every tool available to parliamentarians to force governments to adopt a more realistic posture on China because they're not going to do it on their own. I mean, that's pretty clear. Look at the last 20 years worth of activity. It doesn't matter what Beijing has done on China. Governments have been happy to turn a blind eye. Well, we can't allow that.

So we're trying to use parliaments in order to force that to change. That's the raison d'etre of IPAC. Well, and I'll tell you, I recently also testified in the Taiwanese legislature in the UN And one of the co-chairs in Taiwan of IPAC was actually running that hearing or playing a central role in running that hearing. So doing very good work. Yeah, well, the network has been phenomenally active. You'll probably remember back in 2020, 2021, there were motions passed in parliaments around the world recognizing genocide, genocidal atrocities in the northwest of China against Uyghurs and other minorities. This began as an IPAC initiative, and there have been many others.

So it's, I would almost call it a political action committee, but it isn't. It's actually a bunch of parliamentarians doing everything they can, using all the tools at their fingertips, in order to try to wake up their own governments to the challenges, to the risks posed by the CCP. I want to jump back to what we were talking about earlier. Let's call it transnational repression. Again, a term that you're very familiar with, I'm very familiar with, but it's not sort of in colloquial usage. You know, basically Beijing extending its long arm to, say, the UK,

putting these bounties on people, and a great many other things. This is something that IPAC has been deeply, deeply involved in. You know, one thing that I'm just recalling here is that I think it was it in 2022 in Manchester. There was someone actually dragged onto consulate grounds and beat up. I mean, there's two things I'm thinking right now. One is that, I mean, that's, of course, unbelievably shocking. That's something like could happen like that with relatively limited repercussions, right? And the second part is that, you know, once this embassy is built, right, once this thing is going to finalize,

it becomes effectively sovereign territory for the CCP in this massive space. You'll never know what that floor of rooms is downstairs, nor will you be allowed to know? Well, let me shock you, Jan. It's already sovereign territory. In UK law, once diplomatic consent, which is the jargon for this, once that was given by Boris Johnson in 2018, it already became inviolable diplomatic land. That's what it is already. So very sadly, that ship has already sailed. The question that we're dealing with over the embassy is whether or not they get planning permission for the building. That's what we're opposing. And if they don't get that, they'll probably move out, so we hope that we're successful.

But yeah, you're absolutely right. You raised the case of Bob Chan. This was a Hong Konger in 2022. He was protesting outside the Manchester Consulate in the north of England. And they didn't like this in the consulate in Manchester. So they dragged him into the embassy and get this, the consul general himself punched him in the head. Now what was the United Kingdom's response to this? we think. The United Kingdom allowed China to recall the diplomats and the consul

general who had done that. For me, in any self-respecting country, you kick them out, you label them what's known as persona no grata and you make sure that they are gone because they violated the law, they violated your largesse as the host nation. And that didn't happen because it was China. As per usual, we see different rules being applied to Beijing. So that was just one instance. This happens in the United States too. During the visit of Xi Jinping, there were a whole bunch of protesters who turned up.

They found that there were people from probably organized by the United Front who had come and they assaulted them. This is going to be happening more and more around the world unless we take a zero tolerance approach to it. I agree with you. I mean, what you say about transnational repression is right. I don't like this jargon. Basically what it means is extraordinary levels of illegal bullying from Beijing in other people's

countries. That's what it means. But not just bullying, terrible levels of harassment. There's a whole spectrum of crimes associated with it. It's a category of authoritarian overreach, which we've allowed by the back door. And we've allowed it mainly through this BMOF of an organization called the United Front or United Front work, which, you know, as far as I can make out, is almost like a religion. It's almost preyed into existence by party loyalists who don't necessarily even need to be told

what to do in order to assemble and in order to harass bully dissidents and to do the work of the Communist Party in other people's countries. This is a really pressing threat around the world. Happily, let me give you some good news, I think that intelligence and security services around the world are too slowly, but finally, realizing the severity of this problem. In the United Kingdom, we had a very important parliamentary report on China. It was undertaken by the Intelligence and Security Committee, and this was also 2023. And what they said was that China had penetrated every sector of the United Kingdom economy, and they particularly pointed out the activity of United Front-related organisations.

This is really serious stuff. It's extremely subtle, it's surreptitious, the activities are very often not criminal, but over time they soften the opposition of our institutions and individuals to the designs of the Communist Party. So let's just try to make it a bit clearer because I think it's so important for people to understand. You might have heard of the case of Yang Tembo. He was a guy who was,

and not allowed to come back to the UK because he was suspected of spying. He was United Front connected. He had been giving loads of money to Prince Andrews charities. And he'd been doing that over quite a long period of time. Well, what's wrong with that, you might ask? Where is the criminal intent there? Well, if you are somebody who is able to do that, you're able to develop leverage within prestigious organizations,

then those organizations are not going to be minded to tell the truth about China when they're called to. Not only that, they might facilitate the activity of China in your country. And we've seen this happen throughout business, both in the United States and in the United Kingdom and beyond, in some ways, especially in Germany, but it was terrible in Africa. It's been totally deleterious to sovereignty in Pacific Island nations. It's all over the world this thing. We're talking tens of thousands of people acting to soften the resistance of other countries to the strategies of the Communist Party of China.

And it has to be stood up to. Slowly, our intelligence and security services are getting there, but much more needs to be done. You know, Luke, I like how you talk about this because it just made me, it just added a little bit to my own thinking about the United Front. You know, I sometimes describe to American lawmakers

how imagine if we had a department or what you would call a ministry in the UK, one of the best funded, in fact, in our country that was entirely committed within the country to either subverting or if subversion is impossible, destroying all semblance of civil society. And that's internally, and of course, that's also externally in China towns and across the world and so forth. But there's this other element, right, which really functions the same way.

This is what you made me think of here. That it's, you know, it's not really just necessarily civil society. It's, you know, it's the corporate sector. I guess just charities do fit into so. It's basically whatever institution can be soft and can be subverted, can be sort of, softly parlayed into a tool of the regime. And, you know, for a great example of this were Confucius institutes, many of which have now been renamed since the outcry against them, right? Ostensibly on the surface, just institutions that provide a lot of funding to teach Chinese

for universities and schools in America and Canada and other places. But underneath it is the party line of how you're allowed to talk about things. And it was amazing how these institutions would just basically take that Beijing line because it came with money, it came with some sort of diplomatic cloud and connection. And it just, it was almost silly how easy it was for them to basically put this, you know, significant foothold across our countries. It's so true. And the thing which is, for me, so worrisome about it is just how many sectors of society we're talking about here. And you might think, oh, well, they'd be particularly interested in politics or particularly interested in high business.

But it really is, it's a whole of society approach, which for anybody who is a student of China makes perfect sense because of course the whole of society approach, the whole of state approach is exactly what China is deploying in order to procure their strategy around the world. So there's almost no target too small. We've seen it from all of these linked in attacks where, you know, you have thousands of approaches that are made to people on LinkedIn by United Front Associates or even Ministry of State Security Associates who are trying to lure them into, I don't know,

let's say a visit to China that might fill in some ways a benefit to their career in the longer term or some kind of lucrative opportunity. Many, many people fall for this stuff. It's a very low-cost and high-impact option. if you're seeking to influence people. This stuff is going on all over the country all the time. But some of it's really severe. I don't know if you had seen this remarkable story from the United States.

Great video, which I encourage your listeners to look up. It's only about five minutes. It's called The Great Coke Can Heist. Have you heard of this? Incredible. Tell me about it. Well, what had happened is that somebody, presumably United Front linked or perhaps even working as a through straight-up espionage,

but I think United Front linked, Chinese National, was working in the Coke factory. Now, Coke has a lining within its Coke cans to stop the Coke from corroding the tin that it's in because it's a very strong liquid apparently, so it needs that. But this formula for this chemical to protect the cans was not known in China. So this person stole it. But she stole it in a way which is almost hilariously traditional. It's very old school espionage here. So it was in a case and there was money involved and etc., etc.

What is brilliant about this video? It's effectively a reveal by the FBI in their interview of this person. And they say, you know, did you steal any secrets? And the answer was no. Okay, well, what's this in your briefcase? Was there any kind of contract with any authority in China over the stealing of this secret? No. Okay, well, what's this contract then?

Was there any money that exchanged hands? No, no money whatsoever. Well, what's this money that we found in your case? And it goes through the video like that with the FBI revealing her lies at every single stage of the interview until the point that she couldn't lie anymore. She was completely banged her rights and she just remained silent. All of which is to say, look at her commitment. She was willing in front of the FBI to continually lie right until the point that she couldn't

lie anymore. And that indicates what we're up against. We are up against a group of people so committed to the party that they will behave in that way in your country. We've got to find a way of addressing it that is commensurate with the scale of the problem. we don't have that yet or anything close to it. You know, I was just interviewing the FBI director here in Washington, and one of the things we discussed was, you know,

aside from people who have actually been tried and convicted of espionage on the CCP side, but they actually had 62 removals of agents in the last year. So, you know, just to the point of, and a number of these were working in the diplomatic missions, right? Because, you know, if it's a removal, it's, precisely what you were just describing, right? Someone being dubbed persona nangrata, sorry, you can't be here. You're doing things that are highly inappropriate in a diplomatic position. So this is not from the perspective of this giant UK embassy,

which of course will be staffed appropriately as well with giant staff. This is not supposition. This is very real. Yeah, I totally agree with you. And I do want to be hopeful because we should all admire our intelligence. and security services. They have a huge job here. Bear in mind so much of the activity of the United Front is not even illegal. The kind of influence work that is ongoing is not illegal, only if you can prove that it is in some way being done in order to further the interests of the

CCP, could it be illegal? And that's a very, very hard thing to prove. So they have a tough job, a really tough job, and I admire them. And I'm pleased that in many major democracies, certainly, across the Atlantic, the United Kingdom, the United States. They're a lot more interested in facing up to this problem. We should be hopeful about that. The thing that I also find confusing is your intelligence services in the UK have actually done some pretty good work, some pretty revelatory work, about the level of CCP infiltration, as you mentioned,

for example, in the economic sphere. just again on this kind of common sense grounds given the level of knowledge that your own intelligence services have and that have made publicly available even of course what they have is goes quite a bit beyond that how is it that the CCP seems to still be able to run effectively roughshod through the system this is such a great question because it goes to the heart of the malaise around China within our political systems. For some reason, for some reason, the pleas of security services fall on deaf ears. That's the simple answer to the question. And I can only assume that that's for the usual reasons. And it's the same in Canada, I'll just mention.

It means it's precisely the same situation. Yeah, I mean, they know. They know exactly what's going on. And they're screaming it from the rooftops. So I don't know if you remember this two years ago. The MI5 and FBI chiefs made an unprecedented joint statement saying China is the principal security threat and they particularly singled out United Frontwork. And we want more do they have to do.

So they're screaming about it. It's very clear that they know the extent of the problem. I think the issue is that when it comes to the political level, candidly, there's extraordinary ignorance around China. I mean, people don't know or understand what the party state is, what it intends to do, what its designs are for the United States or the United Kingdom or the entire democratic world. And they labour under misapprehensions about China. There's a lot of conceit from some of what I call the old guard, you know, people who

are presiding over that period of politics where people naively believed that China would change its behavior as it entered into the World Trade Organization. And with economic opening up, there would be a democratization in China. Those people are still around, you know, and the conceit that they bring with them is that they're right about it. They're still right about it. That you can engage with China as you would with France. That France and China are in some way comparable.

They're comparable in the way that we can deal with them. Look, they've got similar kinds of ministries and they talk about trade in similar kinds of ways. Totally belies the actual nature of the party state. But those people are still around. And by the way, I'm not joking about that. It was actually an ambassador to China who said to the former trade minister, Liz Truss, exactly that.

She was asked, how should we treat China? And the answer was like France. That was the actual answer. So your question, how is it that we have this huge disconnect between political strategy when it comes to China and what our intelligence and security services actually know? Complex question to answer. I think it's partly down to the leverage that China exacts. It's partly down to the carrots that it dangles around economic opportunities.

It's partly down to the blunt coercion that they've been willing to meet out to various countries around the world. It's partly down to the conceit of the politicians who are still around or the officials who are still around who will not accept that they were wrong about China. It's all of those things and many more. But it's not helping us at all. So people like me, people like the many politicians in IPAC who do see the reality, who have a better appreciation of the threat of the Chinese Communist Party, are very frustrated by this. It feels like the dialogue of the deaf sometimes. It doesn't matter how much evidence you show them,

they're still going to plow ahead. Yeah, and this is, again, subtitle of my book, and the true nature of America's biggest adversary, and of course not just Americas, but it was written here, hence the Americans. Sure. It's this nature that somehow as a society can't grasp. And I find this, of course, frustrating, but more just strange.

Right? I just, go ahead. No, I agree with you. I think it's because we don't have governments like that. It's almost a, if I can use it as a Latin phrase, a sui-generous government. There's just nothing like this thing. You know, a huge party state pursuing a very disciplined whole-of-state approach, which is now wealthy and is willing to use all of the tools to mobilize behind the protection of the party.

and its interests internationally. Nobody else does that. So it's quite hard to understand it. The nature of government in China is very different. Let me give you a fun example relating to the embassy. So I was talking to somebody who was in the former conservative government in the UK and they were engaging with China previously about the embassy. Now we have processes.

We have checks and balances like you do in the States. So we have a planning permission process in the UK. It's very arcane, it's very strange. But we do have that. And in every meeting, Wang Yi or whoever else would there, would say to their British side, we don't believe you. You're ministers.

What's the point in being a minister if you can't just give us this? Don't talk to us about processes. We don't believe this. They genuinely thought that the United Kingdom was pulling their leg about it, about the fact that we had these processes, These checks and balances to go through. So in some ways, we perhaps don't give enough attention to the fact that these are very incongruent systems, are very, very different, different ways of looking at the world,

very different ways of looking at politics. And maybe that's something that's lost in the analysis too. And very different ways of looking at human beings. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, this is the reason that I was driven into this work, Jan. It wasn't for me initially about the broader security or economic questions. I was driven into this work through human rights work. I ran an anti-slavery charity before doing this, and I couldn't understand why the anti-slavery

community was not talking about the biggest instance of state-sponsored slavery anywhere in the world. Couldn't understand it. So I started talking about it, and then I found that I got a bit ostracized by people within the anti-slavery community for doing that. I didn't understand that at the time. Happily, they're in a better place now, but they weren't back then. And as an aside, there's a reason for that, is because a lot of the philanthropic capital, which props up the anti-slavery movement is invested in China, but that's a whole other story. So I realized, I think, that, you know, in order to address that huge issue, I mean, I was particularly exercised by what was happening in the Northwestern,

China to Egas and others. In order to address that issue, there needed to be cross-party international organization, mobilization of politicians around the world. But then, and I think I'm not alone in this realization, I think the more that you dig into the party state system and its human rights abuses, the more you realize that those abuses are economic problems as much as anything else. in the sense that the mass forced labor, the huge state-sponsored forced labor problem that they have in China, is prosecuted for economic gain and everybody else benefits from

it. One of the reasons that Chinese imports are so cheap is not just the manipulation of currency and state capitalization, it's also mass forced labor. And the more that you look at various iterations of human rights, and it's not just the manipulation human rights abuses in China and the same goes with of course organ harvesting, the more that you realise that you are dealing with economic problems in addition to human dignity problems, in addition to human rights abuses. And it was really that realisation that made me think, okay, I need to get into this more

to really understand it because we are not going to be able to address the human rights problems in isolation. China doesn't look at them in isolation. China addresses these things, uses them as a part of a broader, unified, coherent, cogent state strategy. That's why they do it. And we have to look at China in the same way. And that's why I started IPAC.

It's about that. It's about saying we're going to recognize you for who you are and we're going to use our tools to make sure that our governments don't fall for this any longer. Yeah. Yeah, again, Luke, a very powerful words. This has been an absolutely fascinating conversation. Thank you for that. Perhaps a final thought as we finish.

Yeah, I think what I would say to listeners, not just about IPAC, not just about the sorts of very serious issues that we've talked, that we have discussed during this interview, what I'd say is that there's a lot of cause for hope, But the main cause for hope is the principles which unite us as democracies. We now, more perhaps than any time, certainly in my lifetime, and I would say in a couple of generations, we now have to stand together as allied democracies, more than ever before we are going to have to stand up to a truly overwhelming challenge. So we can take heart in, I think, the principles that bind us together, that orientate us as communities, freedom, democracy, human rights.

These aren't just words. These are the things which really have knit us together as nations. And we have to defend those bonds, take pride in those bonds, and know that those bonds eventually will win, but there's going to be some pain to pass through. We're going to have to pass through that together. So take heart in what makes our nations strong, bind together, don't be intimidated, but particularly be courageous. One of the, in my view, huge problems, challenges of this deep engagement with China and the success of the United Front and the MSS work out of communist China has been actually eroding some of those exact principles.

principles in our own societies. I mean, not with willing help from other bad actors, I'm sure. But, and this is something, so it's interesting when I heard you saying those things, it's sort of a, you know, a call to arms, if you will, not just saying, look, we have this massive adversary, but we need to, you know, kind of revitalize our own belief in these structures. I totally agree with you. People forget the power of those things. They lose their value. They become devalued by being. repeated, but we should all know and believe these things, democracy, human dignity, individual human dignity, which they do not believe in, the Chinese Communist Party doesn't believe in, individual human dignity, democracy, freedoms, these freedoms, they are kryptonite to the Communist Party of China. They will defeat it, ultimately, but we have to believe in them, we have to strive for them, and we have to honour the legacy of our forebears.

who died to protect them. So I hope we'll recover some of the heart and commitment to those principles that our ancestors showed. Well, Luke DePulford, it's such a pleasure to have had you on. Thank you so much for hanging, Jan. Thank you all for joining Luke DePulford and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders. I'm your host, Janja Kellick.