BEIJING (Reuters) – China demanded United States to shut down its consulate in Chengdu city on Friday, in response to a US demand this week that China should close its Houston consulate. The world has witnessed the relations between the two largest economies deteriorate.
The order was just a reflection of China practicing like-for-like responses to US actions.
China had already alerted that it would retaliate after it was given just 72 hours to vacate its Houston consulate, despite the country urging the United States to reconsider.
China’s foreign ministry said in a statement, “The US move seriously breached international law, the basic norms of international relations, and the terms of the China-US Consular Convention. It gravely harmed China-US relations.”
“The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China informed the US Embassy in China of its decision to withdraw its consent for the establishment and operation of the US Consulate General in Chengdu,” it said.
As per the website, the consulate was opened in 1985 and has almost 200 employees including about 150 locally hired staff. It is not really clear how many are there now after a significant number of US diplomats had to evacuate from China during the early stages of the coronavirus outbreak.
The US Department of State and the US embassy in Beijing, however, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a speech on Thursday the United States and its allies must use “more creative and assertive ways” to push the Chinese Communist Party to opt for a change in its ways, calling it the “mission of our time”.
He said the Chengdu consulate was comparatively less important for trade and economic activity, when you look at US consulates in Shanghai, Guangzhou and Hong Kong.
Chinese social media users lauded the response, “let’s renovate it into a hotpot restaurant!”, a reference to a popular dish in Chengdu. This fetched 100,000 likes on the Weibo account of state broadcaster CCTV.
(Photos syndicated via Reuters)
This story has been edited by BH staff and is published from a syndicated field.