Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
China clears out consulate
Scene soon to be echoed at U.S. facility that monitors Tibet
HOUSTON — Workers at the Chinese Consulate in Houston loaded up moving trucks Friday ahead of an afternoon deadline to shut down the facility, as ordered by the Trump administration.
Vans bearing diplomatic plates departed the consulate as the 4 p.m. Friday deadline arrived for the consulate to close. At that point, federal agents checked the locked doors of the consulate and a locksmith was seen working to crack the lock on one door.
Meanwhile, a small group of protesters gathered across the street and played a recording criticizing the Chinese government.
It was unclear if the consulate had been cleared of consular staff. A Houston Police Department spokesman referred all questions to the FBI and State Department, which did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment.
The U.S. alleged that the consulate was a nest of Chinese spies who tried to steal data from facilities in Texas, including the Texas A&M medical system and The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.
China called the allegations “malicious slander” and responded by ordering the U.S. to close its consulate in the western Chinese city of Chengdu.
China appealed to Washington to reverse its “wrong decision,” and Foreign Minister Wang Yi said the current difficulties are completely created by the U.S. side.
Chinese-U.S. relations have soured amid a mounting array of conflicts including trade, the handling of the coronavirus pandemic, technology, spying accusations, Hong Kong and allegations of abuses against Chinese Muslims.
“The measure taken by China [to close the Chengdu consulate] is a legitimate and necessary response to the unjustified act by the United States,” said a foreign ministry spokesperson, Wang Wenbin.
Wang said some consulate personnel “interfered in China’s internal affairs and harmed China’s security interests” but gave no details. He said Beijing complained “many times” to Washington about that.
Also Friday, the U.S. State Department sent out a notice warning Americans in China of a “heightened risk of arbitrary detention.”
“U.S. citizens may be subjected to prolonged interrogations and extended detention for reasons related to ‘state security,’” the notice said.
Americans may be detained or deported for “sending private electronic messages critical” of the Chinese government, it said. The notice gave no indication of what prompted the warning.
The United States has an embassy in Beijing and consulates in five other mainland cities — Shanghai, Guangzhou, Chengdu, Shenyang and Wuhan. It also has a consulate in Hong Kong, a Chinese territory.
The consulate in Chengdu is responsible for monitoring Tibet and other areas in the southwest inhabited by nonethnic Chinese minorities that are considered especially sensitive by Beijing.
The party’s propaganda outlets struck a nationalistic note Friday, vowing that Beijing would hold firm in the face of mounting pressure from Washington.
“The United States has recently stirred up troubles in relations with China to the point of hysteria,” the official Xinhua News Agency said in an editorial.
“The unprovoked closure of the Chinese consulate in Houston by the United States not only aroused the indignation of the Chinese people,” the editorial said, “but also allowed the international community to see the true face of American bullying.”
On Thursday, the U.S. Justice Department said it believes the Chinese Consulate in San Francisco is harboring a Chinese researcher, Tang Juan, who is accused of lying about her background in the Communist Party’s military wing on a visa application.
The department announced criminal charges of visa fraud against Tang and three other Chinese researchers. It said Tang lied on a visa application in October as she made plans to work at the University of California, Davis, and again during an FBI interview months later.
U.S. authorities also this week announced criminal charges against two Chinese computer hackers who are accused of targeting companies that are working on vaccines for the coronavirus.
On Friday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called on “freedom-loving nations of the world” to band together and “induce China to change.”
Pompeo spoke in California at the library of former President Richard Nixon, whose visit to China in 1972 set in motion a new era of relations that, he said, disadvantaged the United States.
“If we bend the knee now, our children’s children may be at the mercy of the Chinese Communist Party, whose actions are the primary challenge today in the free world,” said Pompeo, whose reference to the closing of the consulate in Houston was met with applause.
“General Secretary Xi is not destined to tyrannize inside and outside of China forever unless we allow it,” he added, referring to Xi Jinping, China’s leader.
Information for this article was contributed by Joe McDonald of The Associated Press; and by Keith Bradsher and Steven Lee Myers of The New York Times.