Letter to The UK Ambassador about Concerns Regarding Foreign Exploitation of SBIR and STTR Programs and National Security Risks

February 26, 2025

His Excellency
Lord (Peter) Mandelson
Ambassador of the United Kingdom
British Embassy
3100 Massachusetts Avenue NW
Washington, D.C. 20008
United States

Dear Lord Mandelson,

We are writing before the upcoming meeting between Prime Minister Keir Starmer and President Donald J. Trump to register our concern about the proposed plans for a new and expanded Chinese “super-embassy” on the site of the Royal Mint Court in London. Although there seems to be some tentative approval by UK officials for the project, it is our opinion that gifting the Chinese Communist government with the largest embassy in Europe is a counterproductive and unearned reward.

Incongruously, the People’s Republic of China gets the largest embassy in Europe while thousands of political prisoners are detained in Hong Kong (including UK citizen Jimmy Lai), while the UK’s market is flooded with goods—from tinned tomatoes to solar panels—made with forced labor in China, and while diplomats associated with the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Offices spy on UK and EU citizens. At the same time, the Chinese Communist government is committing atrocities against Uyghurs and Tibetans, uses torture against political prisoners, and employs almost daily military and “grey zone” threats to intimidate the people of Taiwan—including cutting cables, a tactic we have seen employed in the Baltic as well.

Moreover, conceding the Chinese Communist government such a prominent diplomatic foothold in the UK will only embolden its efforts to intimidate and harass UK citizens and dissidents and experts across Europe who oppose or criticize its policies. China’s transnational repression operations are well-documented in the UK and throughout Europe. In the United States, organizations linked to Chinese embassies spy on Chinese students and scholars and helped mobilize “volunteers” to harass protesters who tried to raise human rights concerns during Xi Jinping’s visit to San Francisco for the APEC conference in 2023.

In addition, your government is likely well aware of the Chinese Communist Party’s systematic effort to coopt social and business elites to advance its political and economic goals through malign influence operations, which include subverting free speech and other democratic values and overlooking unfair trade practices to gain economic advantages, including the use of forced labor in prisons and in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.

We know that Prime Minister Starmer has expressed concern about Jimmy Lai’s detention and promised to make his release a UK government “priority.” We urge him to use his meeting with President Trump to coordinate efforts to gain Lai’s unconditional release.

We take seriously the special relationship between the U.S. and the UK and offer these opinions in the spirit of friendship and in service of an ongoing and strong alliance. We ask that you convey our concerns to Prime Minister Starmer during his upcoming visit to the United States and would be happy to discuss them with you at your convenience.

Sincerely,

Christopher Smith
Member of Congress

John Moolenaar
Member of Congress