Guard at China’s London mega-embassy site threatens teens with electroshock weapon

A guard protecting China’s controversial new mega-embassy site in London allegedly brandished an electroshock weapon to scare off youths who had scaled a security gate, The i Paper can reveal. Footage, seen by this newspaper, shows a security worker at the Royal Mint Court site, waving what appears to be a stun baton towards the group after several of them tried to climb onto the premises, while others hurled bottles. Although the guard is being antagonised by the youths in the video, it is the second time in less than a week that Chinese embassy workers have been accused of wielding electroshock weapons that are prohibited in the UK. Shorts Last week, The i Paper revealed that guards at Beijing’s embassy in Portland Place, London, had been accused of brandishing stun batons at protesters to intimidate them in July, sparking a diplomatic row between the UK and Chinese governments. The latest revelation is also likely to reignite the controversy surrounding the Government’s decision to approve the new super-embassy near the Tower of London – just weeks after the High Court dismissed a legal challenge brought by nearby residents. Video footage of the incident, that occurred on 16 May at around 3pm, has been handed to the Metropolitan Police. Luke de Pulford, the founder and executive director of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, accused Beijing of “acting like a bunch of mobsters”. “This isn’t an isolated problem – Chinese guards have now been caught on camera with prohibited weapons in two of their premises. I have reported this to the police because the public needs answers and reassurance that nobody is above the law” he said. Electroshock weapons are prohibited under Section 5 of the Firearms Act 1968. Alicia Kearns, the Conservative shadow security minister, said: “We now have evidence these prohibited weapons are being held on other Chinese premises. This shows an industrial level of illegal action by the Chinese Government.” She warned that if the Government allows China to “brandish illegal weapons on British soil without consequence”, the country “will take it as a green light to go further in its threats against the UK at home and abroad”. The latest development is likely to intensify pressure on ministers, who were already facing calls from nearly 20 human rights organisations to seek a waiver of diplomatic immunity for the guards involved in the Portland Place incident, and to reconsider the future of Beijing’s new embassy. The UK Government had warned China that actions by a foreign state to “coerce, intimidate, harass, or harm individuals on UK soil will never be tolerated” after campaigners alleged that embassy security personnel pointed electroshock weapons at them when tensions boiled over during a candlelit vigil in July. The vigil was being held for Lobga Rangzen, a prominent Tibetan independence activist who accused China of repression of Tibet. He died after setting himself on fire outside the United Nations headquarters in New York. After footage emerged of Chinese guards brandishing the stun batons at protesters, UK officials raised the matter directly with the embassy, while a Metropolitan Police investigation remains ongoing. No arrests have been made. In a letter to the Prime Minister Andy Burnham, the human rights organisations, including Free Tibet, Hong Kong Watch and Stop Uyghur Genocide, argued that every plausible route by which prohibited weapons could have entered the embassy – whether in diplomatic baggage that is exempt from customs searches, or through a purchase made in the UK – would raise questions of potentially unlawful conduct. They also question what assurance the public can have “that nothing else prohibited under UK law is held there”. The letter pointed to violence against a protester at the Chinese Consulate General in Manchester in 2022 as an earlier example of the difficulties faced by British authorities when allegations involve diplomatic personnel. The Manchester confrontation took place during a demonstration against the Chinese government and was filmed by those at the scene. A protester was pulled through the consulate gates and into the grounds, where he was beaten, as other demonstrators attempted to intervene. The Foreign Office summoned China’s most senior representative and demanded an explanation. Six Chinese diplomats subsequently left the UK after the Government requested that they be made available for questioning – meaning no charges were brought. The episode became a test of how far diplomatic immunity could frustrate a UK police investigation. The row comes just weeks after the High Court dismissed a separate legal challenge brought by residents of Royal Mint Court against the granting of planning permission for China’s vast new embassy. In a ruling handed down on 31 July, Lord Justice Dingemans and Mrs Justice Lieven found that the housing secretary under Sir Keir Starmer’s government had lawfully considered national security and other risks in approving the scheme in January. The Royal Mint Court Residents’ Association, whose case argued that blacked-out rooms in the approved plans, and the site’s inaccessibility to emergency services under diplomatic inviolability, posed an unmanageable fire risk, is expected to seek to take the case to the Court of Appeal. A Met Police spokesperson said: “On Saturday, 29 August at 22:32hrs, police received a third-party online report of a person with a suspected electroshock device at Royal Mint Court, EC3N.“It is believed the report relates to an incident on Saturday, 16 May 2026.“Initial enquiries remain ongoing.” The i Paper has approached the Chinese Embassy for comment.