China has ordered the United States to close its consulate in the southwestern city of Chengdu, retaliating against Washington’s move earlier this week to shut down the Chinese consulate in the Texas city of Houston.
The Chinese foreign ministry said on Friday that the Chengdu mission’s closure was a “legitimate and necessary response to the unreasonable measures by the United States”.
“The current situation in China-US relations is not what China desires to see,” it said in a statement, adding that “the US is responsible for all this”.
“We once again urge the United States to immediately retract its wrong decision and create necessary conditions for bringing the bilateral relationship back on track.”
The tit-for-tat moves come amid a dramatic escalation in tensions between the world’s two biggest economies.
On Tuesday, Washington gave Beijing 72 hours to close its mission in Houston alleging the theft of intellectual property and espionage – a claim the Chinese side called “malicious slander”.
Ties have also deteriorated over a number of issues, ranging from the new coronavirus pandemic to Beijing’s trade and business practices, and from its territorial claims in the South China Sea to its clampdown in Hong Kong and the far western region of Xinjiang.
Meanwhile, in a major speech on Thursday, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo took fresh aim at Beijing, saying Washington and its allies must use “more creative and assertive ways” to press the Chinese Communist Party to change its ways.
Speaking at the Nixon Library in President Richard Nixon’s birthplace in Yorba Linda, California, Pompeo said that the former US leader’s worry about what he had done by opening the world to China’s Communist Party in the 1970s had been prophetic.
“President Nixon once said he feared he had created a ‘Frankenstein’ by opening the world to the CCP,” Pompeo said. “And here we are.”
“The truth is that our policies – and those of other free nations – resurrected China’s failing economy, only to see Beijing bite the international hands that were feeding it,” he continued.
“The freedom-loving nations of the world must induce China to change … in more creative and assertive ways, because Beijing’s actions threaten our people and our prosperity.”
Pompeo said “securing our freedoms from the Chinese Communist Party is the mission of our time” and said the US was perfectly positioned to lead it.
The speech drew sharp criticism from Beijing, with Hua Chunying, a spokeswoman for the Chinese foreign ministry, saying Pompeo’s remarks suggested he wants to “launch a new crusade against China in a globalized world”.
“What he is doing is as futile as an ant trying to shake a tree,” she wrote on Twitter. “It’s about time that all peace-loving people in the world stepped forward to prevent him from doing the world more harm.”
