China Retaliates for Closure of Houston Consulate

Beijing orders closure of US consulate in Chengdu
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted Jul 24, 2020 3:44 AM CDT
Updated Jul 24, 2020 6:42 AM CDT
China Orders Closure of US Consulate
China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Wang Wenbin gestures during a daily briefing at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Beijing, Friday, July 24, 2020.   (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)

China says that as a "necessary response" to the US order to close its consulate in Houston, the US is going to lose one of its consulates in China. The foreign ministry said Friday that it had ordered the closure of the consulate in the southwestern city of Chengdu, the BBC reports. The consulate, established in 1985, has more than 200 employees and is responsible for monitoring Tibet and other western regions. The order came hours after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo delivered a speech outlining a new hardline policy against Xi Jinping's regime, reports the New York Times. "If the free world doesn’t change Communist China, Communist China will change us," Pompeo said.

Pompeo, speaking at the Richard Nixon presidential library in California, warned that "free nations" must fight China's "new tyranny," the Guardian reports. Nixon "once said he feared he had created a 'Frankenstein' by opening the world to the CCP," Pompeo said, referring to the country's Communist party. "And here we are." He said the US had ordered the closure of the Houston consulate "because it was a hub of spying and IP theft." The tit-for-tat consulate closures have helped bring US-China relations to their lowest levels in decades, the AP reports. In a statement Friday, China's foreign ministry blamed the US for the "current situation" and urged Washington to "immediately retract its wrong decision" and lift the order to close the Houston consulate. (The FBI says a fugitive researcher is being harbored by another Chinese consulate.)

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