China to note ‘every incident of harassment’ at US border

China has taken another, bigger swipe at the US over what it alleges is increasing mistreatment of its nationals at the American border, saying it will keep protesting over “every single incident”.

The renewed criticism comes after Beijing and Washington have reiterated a commitment to more contact between their societies in a bid to mend bilateral ties.

In a statement on Monday, the Chinese embassy in the United States accused the US of unjustifiably sending back nearly 300 Chinese citizens since July 2021, including more than 70 students that it said had legal and valid travel documents.

In one case, a visiting Chinese scholar was detained for 22 hours on arrival at San Francisco International Airport in February before having his visa cancelled. He was deported back to China and banned from entering the US for five years, the embassy said.

Four US customs officers were said to have interrogated the scholar for 12 hours in the “secondary inspection” area where further interviews are conducted, questioning the traveller’s political background, research field, purpose for visiting the US and funding methods.

“Similar incidents have emerged, one after another, with increasing frequency recently,” the embassy said, adding that even officials invited by the US for a friendly visit were not immune to being harassed.

“Such acts by the US side far exceeded the scope of normal law enforcement and are driven by strong ideological bias.”

The embassy and some consulates have formally protested to the US State Department, National Security Council, Homeland Security and Customs and Border Protection, according to the statement.

“The Chinese side has been ‘lodging representations on every single incident’ towards the final resolution of the issue,” it said.

Beijing has repeatedly cited in recent months what it says is Washington “unwarrantedly” blocking, investigating, conducting body searches of and deporting arriving Chinese students, scholars and businesspeople.

The issue has moved up its agenda for managing the relationship with the US.

In February, top diplomat Wang Yi raised the matter with his US counterpart Antony Blinken, and Public Security Minister Wang Xiaohong brought it up with Alejandro Mayorkas, the US secretary for homeland security.

During a talk by phone on April 2, President Xi Jinping and his American counterpart Joe Biden agreed to take further steps to expand people-to-people exchanges, building on a consensus reached at their summit in California five months ago.

But the Chinese embassy on Monday once again said the recent actions of American border control officers violated the common understanding reached by the two presidents. “China urges the US to … stop poisoning the environment of public support for relations between the two countries,” it said.

Less than two weeks before the embassy’s statement, the foreign ministry issued a travel advisory to Chinese visiting the US, warning them there may be “various unexpected situations” such as “unwarranted interrogation and harassment”.

The US updated its travel advisory on China in July, recommending that Americans reconsider visiting the country because of “arbitrary” law enforcement, including issuing exit bans.

Academics from both nations said in a virtual forum last month that American students in China had not experienced significant threats to their safety, and called on the State Department to make its travel advisory for the country more specific.

In an address to US business leaders in California in November, Xi said Beijing was ready to invite 50,000 young Americans to China for exchanges and study in the next five years. The country has since seen more groups of US students arrive.

According to data from the Institute of International Education, Chinese students have outnumbered any other foreign group studying in the US for 15 consecutive years.

In the school year ending in September 2023, there were 289,526 Chinese students in the US, a slight decrease of 0.2 per cent from the previous year and the least since 2013-14, but the number of graduate students among them rebounded for the second straight year, according to the institute’s annual study funded by the US government.

Ambassador Nicholas Burns said last December that the number of American students in China rose to 700 last year after falling sharply to 350 in 2022. But the total was still far below the nearly 15,000 recorded in the 2011-12 academic year.

Similar incidents have emerged, one after another, with increasing frequency recently CHINA’S EMBASSY IN THE U.S.