Chinese spies are 'bugging London's pubs and park benches,' security sources say (2025)

Chinese spies could be listening in while you sit down for a sandwich at lunch across central London parks, security insiders claim.

Park benches and pubs of Westminster have apparently been identified as targets by Beijing.

Politicians and parliamentary researchers have been warned by security sources that seemingly harmless places to sit could be bugged, so they should be careful of what they chat about.

Security sources told the Mail on Sunday that there are known ‘hotspots’ in the capital where information is exchanged.

They say this espionage goes beyond online eavesdropping, or honey-trappers suggesting a drink, and even includes the foliage of St James’s Park.

‘We have been told the Chinese literally have the park bugged, with devices in the bushes and under park benches,’ one source alleged.

They claimed that this was seen as worthwhile because civil servants and researchers often meet in the park over their lunch break.

Junior staff in the chambers of power are supposedly seen as soft targets by regimes including Russia and Iran, as well as China.

The idea of hidden mics on park benches sounds ridiculous, given that – if they do exist – whoever has to listen to them is more likely to overhear a squabble between a pigeon and a squirrel than anything relevant to national security.

But there are some pubs and hotels that were singled out as particularly high risk by sources.

The Red Lion pub on Parliament Street, which has pictures of politicians on the walls and is popular with MPs, is not a safe place to disclose classified information because of ‘Chinese agents,’ a source claimed.

Five-star hotels the Corinthia near Trafalgar Square and the new Raffles on Whitehall were also said to be hotspots for espionage.

The claims come amid renewed questions over relationships with China, with the country embroiled in a trade war with the US over tariffs.

Last week, concerns were raised about plans for a new Chinese‘super-embassy’at the former Royal Mint building in Tower Hamlets.

Documents submitted as part of the planning application revealed ‘two suites of anonymous unlabelled basement rooms and a tunnel’.

Their actual purpose has been redacted for ‘security reasons’, and security expert Will Geddestold Metrothat the unnamed rooms ‘could be used for anything’, such as ‘detentions, planning, and even weaponry’.

Last weekend, MPs approvedgovernmentplans to take control of British Steel’s blast furnaces in Scunthorpe after negotiations with their Chinese owners, Jingye, appeared to break down.

The company had stopped buying enough raw materials to keep the blast furnaces going, with business secretary Jonathan Reynolds accusing them of failing to negotiate ‘in good faith’.

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