China orders closure of US Consulate
Retaliatory move further deteriorates countries’ relations
BEIJING — As the United States lashed out against the “new tyranny” of China, Beijing on Friday ordered the closure of the U.S. Consulate in Chengdu, a retaliatory move that threatens to drive the two powers into an even deeper divide.
Beijing blamed the Trump administration for the deterioration in relations, calling its own action justified after Washington told China this past week to shutter its consulate in Houston and accused its diplomats of acting illegally. A Chinese official, in turn, denounced U.S. diplomats in Chengdu, a southwestern city, for interfering in China’s affairs.
In the Chinese telling, Beijing is under assault as the Trump administration goes after it with increasing intensity on trade, technology and human rights. In a matter of weeks, the United States has sanctioned Chinese officials over the ruling Communist Party’s policies in Hong Kong and the western region of Xinjiang, cut off Chinese companies’ access to U.S. technology and challenged Beijing’s claims in the South China Sea.
The party’s propaganda outlets struck a nationalistic note Friday, vowing that Beijing would hold firm in the face of mounting pressure from the United States.
“The United States has recently stirred up troubles in relations with China to the point of hysteria,” said the official Xinhua News Agency 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 read, “but also allowed the international community to see the true face bullying.”
To the Trump administration, China has been the aggressor. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo this week accused Beijing of exploiting the West’s willingness to engage with the Communist Party. He called on “freedom-loving nations of the world” to band together and “induce China to change.”
Chinese officials have reacted angrily to the administration, accusing Pompeo and others of embracing a Cold War mentality. In a tweet Friday, Hua Chunying, a Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, criticized Pompeo for “launching a new crusade against China in a globalized world.”
“What he is doing is futile as an ant trying shake a tree,” Hua wrote.
Increasingly, both sides of
American as to in Chengdu, China, after are staking out intractable positions from which it would be hard to find common ground.
“Pompeo’s speech is the new Cold War declaration of the United States,” said Shi Yinhong, an international relations professor at Renmin University in Beijing. “And the world is divided into two: Start anew and carry out all aspects of competition and confrontation with China.”
The concern is that the damage wrought by these recent moves will become increasingly difficult to reverse. China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs appeared aware of this risk even as it announced the closure of the consulate in Chengdu, suggesting the United States could help to bring the relationship back on track if it immediately retracted its decision on the
consulate in Houston.
But the Trump administration has said the closure of the Houston consulate was necessary because it had become a hub of illegal spying and influence operations, allegations that Chinese officials have denied.
Wang Wenbin, a spokesman for the Foreign Ministry, accused U.S. diplomats in Chengdu on Friday of engaging in inappropriate activities, without providing examples.
“They interfered in China’s internal affairs and harmed China’s national security interests,” he told reporters at a regular briefing.
Within hours of the announcement, the Chengdu consulate became an object of national fascination in China. A live video feed showing the closed front gate of the consulate had been viewed 24 million times by Friday evening on Weibo, a Chinese microblogging service.
Chinese diplomats had been seen burning what appeared to be documents in the courtyard of the Houston consulate after they were ordered to leave, raising speculation in China about whether U.S. diplomats might do the same.
The immediate effect of the two consulates’ closures is expected to be minimal, especially since the visas they normally process have become moot at a time when travel has been severely limited by the coronavirus pandemic.
But the closure of the consulate in Chengdu, the westernmost of the five U.S. consulates in mainland China, deprives the United States in a city that is a hub for China’s commercial expansion
Expires: retaliatory measure.
Expires: across Central Asia. Chengdu is also its most valuable diplomatic outpost for gathering information on Xinjiang and Tibet — two sometimes restive regions in China’s far west.
Both regions have been the locations for wide-ranging security crackdowns that have drawn international criticism as abuses of human rights. Chinese officials have dismissed such concerns as unfair.
The consulate in Chengdu was also briefly at the center of Chinese political intrigue in 2012 when Wang Lijun, the police chief from the nearby metropolis of Chongqing, fled there after a falling-out with his boss, the city’s party leader, Bo Xilai.
Bo was later accused of being at the center of a conspiracy to seize control of the Communist Party.