“There’s no indication that the proposed move is no longer going to happen, just that nothing has happened yet.”

The plan is to make it China’s largest embassy in the West, eventually accommodating around 300 diplomats. In such a prestigious site, it is likely to become an important UK landmark.

But when the excavators and construction workers do move in, they may find hidden traces of the Qing dynasty, in the form of silver or a sycee, an ancient Chinese ingot.

For it was the Royal Mint that took delivery of tonnes of silver that China was forced to pay as part of the settlements to the UK, including the “unfair treaties” that ended the opium wars and made Hong Kong a British colony.

With landmark UK embassy planned for East London, China rides the river of history full circle

The opium wars of the mid-19th century were fought after China tried to stop the British from selling Indian opium in China, causing devastating social consequences.

They were small-scale wars but had a global impact and introduced the concept of gunboat diplomacy.

China became a colonial contact zone and Hong Kong was ceded to Britain and a number of “treaty ports” were forcibly opened, where foreigners could live year-round and trade with anyone they wished.

For the first time in its history, China had to bow to the dictates of Western desires.

“That page of Chinese history was one of humiliation and sorrow,” China’s President Xi Jinping said during a visit to Hong Kong in 2017.

The first opium war started in 1839 and ended with the Treaty of Nanking, the first of what China later described as the “unfair treaties”.

Signed on August 29, 1842, the Treaty of Nanking forced China to pay reparations.

It also opened up five Chinese ports to British traders – Guangzhou, Xiamen, Fuzhou, Ningbo and Shanghai. It also ceded Hong Kong as a permanent British colony.

China paid up and tonnes of silver were shipped to the south coast of Britain and then onwards by train to London.

According to newspaper reports of the time, the silver from China began to arrive at London’s Royal Mint in January 1842 in wooden wagons, to throngs of cheering onlookers.

“The first shipments of silver followed the battle between the British and the Chinese in Guangzhou in late May 1841.

“This involved the Chinese inhabitants agreeing to a ransom of six million dollars, of which one million was payable by the end of May 27, 1841 and the rest to follow very soon after,” explained Dr Dong Wang, Director of the Wellington Koo Institute for Modern China in World History at Shanghai University.

“The ransom was not to be part of the war indemnities and reparations negotiated in the Nanking Treaty, but were “understood to be wholly irrespective of the main questions between Great Britain and China”.

It was described as funds at the disposal of the crown, and it seems that it was dispatched to London almost immediately on at least two different ships.

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An article in The Morning Post on January 11, 1842 recounted how crowds of people waited to witness the arrival of the wagons that transported the booty to the Royal Mint where it was to be smelted down.

“The great gates having been thrown open, the vans and the gates entered amidst loud cheering from the populace,” the paper wrote.

The first instalment from Guangzhou (then called Canton) “consists of small bars and lumps of sycee silver, the whole of which is to be melted down and refined prior to it being converted into the current coin of the realm”.

“Many years have elapsed since a treasure so valuable entered the metropolis,” the paper wrote.

On March 9, 1943, The Times reported the arrival of a further 20 tonnes of the Chinese silver. This time the silver was “in lumps, in the shape of an egg cut in half”, packed in 425 boxes.

The Illustrated London News published a huge spread on the arrival of the silver, with a picture of the crowds outside the Royal Mint as the silver-laden wagons arrived, as well as pictures of Chinese Mandarins and examples of the beautiful sycees.

The paper added that the Chinese ransom was “coming in every year with a punctuality that makes us wish the Celestials (The Celestial Kingdom, and old name for China) owed us such another”.

Another newspaper report from the London Evening Standard on August 5, 1845 told of silver arriving at the mint in 500 boxes.

Indeed the vast sums involved enabled the Conservative government of Robert Peel to keep down taxes and the opposition Whigs out of power.

The Chinese embassy in London did not reply to a query from The Post about the site’s development. Beijing announced on May 18, 2018 that it was leaving its current embassy in Portland Place in the West End.

“I am confident that after the renovation, the new premises of the Chinese Embassy will become a new landmark in London and a new face of China in the new era,” said ambassador Liu Xiaoming at the time.

Planning permission is already in place for retail outlets, submitted by the previous owners of the site.

But as well as the main Royal Mint palace, built in 1810, but which has laid empty for decades, it is also expected there will be a cultural centre built on the site that will sit alongside 600,000 square metres of office space.

A spokesperson for the Britain’s embassy in Beijing denied a report last year in The Sun newspaper that London was blocking China’s plans to move its diplomatic offices unless Beijing agreed to give Britain control of a road next to it.

“The British Embassy in Beijing is not aware of any such dispute” said an embassy spokesperson.

The embassy said the road described was a public road used as a driveway to the residence of the ambassador of India, who occupies the neighbouring plot of land.

Meanwhile, Beijing has not said how much it paid for the Royal Mint property, but the price tag is estimated to be more than £200 million (US$292 million).

Property agents Savills, who helped with the deal, say once completed in two years’ time, the fortress-style embassy and cultural hub would be worth £750 million.

But with a site so entrenched in Anglo-Chinese history, its real value to China could be far, far more.