China to US: Revoke Consulate Decision or Face Countermeasures

China’s response to reactions to their games? The demand for reason, cooperation, etc. (The Donald Win)

This is what a tweet from a Chinese official sounded like. The US ordered the Chinese to shut their Houston consulate. They have 72 hours, as of the order, to comply. According to Senator Marco Rubio, this consulate appeared to be the central node for Chinese activity. This included spying and influence operations.

From Reuters:

Speaking on a visit to Denmark, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo repeated accusations about Chinese theft of U.S. and European intellectual property, which he said were costing “hundreds of thousands of jobs.”

While offering no specifics about the Houston consulate, Pompeo referred to a U.S. Justice Department indictment on Tuesday of two Chinese nationals over what it called a decade-long cyber espionage campaign that targeted defense contractors, COVID researchers and hundreds of other victims worldwide.

“President Trump has said: ‘Enough. We are not going to allow this to continue to happen,'” Pompeo told reporters. “That’s the actions that you’re seeing taken by President Trump, we’ll continue to engage in this.”

Republican Senator Marco Rubio, acting chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, described the Houston consulate on Twitter as the “central node of the Communist Party’s vast network of spies & influence operations in the United States”.

Trump was due to hold a news conference at 5.30 p.m. (2130 GMT), the White House said.

The New York Times quoted the top U.S. diplomat for East Asia, David Stilwell, as saying that the Houston consulate had been at the “epicenter” of the Chinese army’s efforts to advance its warfare advantages by sending students to U.S. universities.

“We took a practical step to prevent them from doing that,” Stilwell told the Times.

Reuters has the balance of the article here.

Category: Politics