The Global Times has also accused US President Donald Trump of playing politics.
SHANGHAI:
The U.S. government’s decision to close the Chinese consulate in Houston is an attempt to blame Beijing for U.S. failures ahead of the November presidential elections, Chinese state media said in editorial Thursday.
The United States said on Wednesday that it had given China 72 hours to shut down the consulate “to protect American intellectual property and American private information.”
The move marked a dramatic escalation in tensions between the world‘s two largest economies amid new accusations of Chinese espionage in the United States and calls by U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo for a new global coalition against Beijing.
The Chinese Embassy in the United States called the decision to close the Houston consulate a “political provocation” and called on Washington to “immediately revoke” the decision. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying wrote on Twitter that China “would surely respond with firm countermeasures.”
The official English-language newspaper China Daily described the move as “yet another gamble in the US administration’s attempt to portray China as a malicious actor on the world stage and thereby make it an outlaw. the international community”.
“This decision shows that, lagging behind his opponent in the presidential election in the polls … the American leader is doing everything possible in his attempts to portray China as an agent of evil,” he added. .
The Global Times, an English-language tabloid run by the Communist Party’s People’s Daily newspaper, also accused US President Donald Trump of playing politics.
“The November presidential election is driving Washington mad,” he said.
In a statement released Thursday morning, the Chinese embassy in Washington accused the United States of “baseless fabrications” on the actions of Chinese diplomatic missions and urged it to “immediately revoke this erroneous decision.”
“It’s time to hit the brakes and get back in the right direction!” the embassy posted separately on its official Twitter account.
According to documents filed by US courts, the Federal Bureau of Investigation also alleges that a Chinese researcher accused of visa fraud and concealment of military ties is now locked up in the Chinese consulate in San Francisco.
Other Chinese researchers at U.S. universities have also been arrested for visa fraud, the documents show.
(Except for the title, this story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is posted from a syndicated feed.)
