What’s the perfect housewarming gift for the People’s Republic of China? For Mark Nygate and his neighbours, it was a thorny question. After all, there isn’t an obvious precedent for when the Chinese government buys your housing block as part of a £255m deal to construct the largest embassy in Europe.
He was in Helsinki when he got the WhatsApp. But by the time he’d returned to his flat in Royal Mint Court, Tower Hamlets, Mark and his fellow members of the residents' association had the present problem solved. They commissioned a shoebox-sized, red wooden replica of the former Royal Mint building, within which they placed several ceremonial coins. As opening gambits go, it was a good one.
But as the three Chinese consular staff ushered the four men from Royal Mint Court Residents' Association (RMCRA) into the bare office room within the Royal Mint site, things began to unravel. The wooden box was confusedly received and placed in a corner. Men entered to pour tea. Suddenly the tea servers re-emerged with mobile phones and began waving the cameras in the faces of their shocked visitors; moving them in circular motions to capture their likeness from different angles.
“We went in there to try and create a relationship,” Mark tells me when we go for coffee at the nearby St Katharine’s Docks. In his 50s, with a matted oval of hair that brings to mind a beaver’s tail, he’s wearing an octopus themed T-shirt and a crinkled green jacket. “That was the least respectful thing you could do,” he says.
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That was 2018. In the years that followed, Mark and several other residents crowdfunded over £250,000 to oppose China’s plans to build the embassy. They financed legal opinions and barristers, as communication lines between them and the Chinese government broke down. After constant delays, the planning inspectorate eventually approved the plans last month.
But Mark and several more residents have now raised enough money for a formal judicial review of the government’s decision. “We just decided there's no way we can let this go ahead without a fight,” he tells me, stoically. They're submitting the application today.
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