[ad_1]
Deputy Secretary of State Steve Biegun pointed Wednesday to “a growing number of disputes” between the US and China over Beijing’s “increasingly hardline and aggressive actions” which have led the administration to take motion, together with closing the consulate in Houston.
Jeff Moon, a former assistant US commerce consultant for China, famous the State Department mentioned the Houston order was a response to Chinese mental property theft and mentioned that raised questions about why just one consulate was focused.
“If that were the real reason, the US would close the San Francisco consulate, which covers Silicon Valley,” mentioned Moon, who was amongst those that instructed politics could be at work. “This action is red meat for Trump supporters who are eager to retaliate against China and divert attention from Trump’s disastrous Covid-19 policy.”
US State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus mentioned the consulate was directed to shut “in order to protect American intellectual property and Americans’ private information,” however didn’t instantly present further particulars of what prompted the closure. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who’s scheduled to give a speech on China Thursday and simply accomplished a visit in Europe to urge a more durable stance in opposition to Beijing, declined to supply particulars about the consulate resolution. The State Department did not reply to requests for additional clarification.
Sen. Angus King, an unbiased of Maine who caucuses with Democrats, informed CNN’s John Berman on “New Day” Wednesday that he was not conscious of any “recent intelligence of particular Chinese activities, either with regard to our elections, or the whole confrontation between our two countries — theft of intellectual property” which will have pushed the choice.
A former official who left the Trump administration final yr mentioned that Trump usually pushed again on advisers who urged him to impose more durable punitive measures on China out of concern that it will jeopardize commerce negotiations.
Even so, as Covid-19 started devastating public and financial well being within the US, the President’s Republican allies and influential White House workers, together with Jared Kushner, started arguing that a technique to energize the President’s political base is by blasting China over its failure to stem the unfold of the illness early on, administration officers and three individuals conversant in Kushner’s considering have informed CNN.
Moon, who now runs China Moon Strategies, a consultancy on US-China commerce and financial relations, mentioned focusing on the Houston consulate was a approach for the President to thread the needle between showing powerful but not taking over a lot danger.
The US and Chinese governments informally pair their consulates, with China’s Houston facility informally linked to the US consulate in Wuhan. Moon famous that the Wuhan consulate reportedly stays closed due to coronavirus, “so China could ‘close’ and escalate the diplomatic war as little as possible.”
A ‘huge community of spies’
On Wednesday, Biegun informed the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that Trump moved to shut the consulate due to rising aggression by China.
Biegun pointed to “commercial espionage and intellectual property theft from American companies; unequal treatment of our diplomats, businesses, NGOs, and journalists by Chinese authorities; and abuse of the United States’ academic freedom and welcoming posture toward international students to steal sensitive technology and research from our universities in order to advance the PRC’s military capabilities.”
“It is these factors which led the President to direct a number of actions in response, including yesterday’s notification to the PRC that we’ve withdrawn our consent for the PRC to operate its consulate in Houston, Texas,” he mentioned.
On Wednesday, Trump mentioned “it’s always possible” that he’ll order extra Chinese consulates closed, including that US officers thought there was a hearth on the Houston consulate however apparently “they were burning documents.”
Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, the performing chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, wrote on Twitter Wednesday that closing the Houston consulate “needed to happen,” and claimed it’s a “central node of the Communist Party’s vast network of spies.”
Asked about that allegation, a present US intelligence official agreed, telling CNN that “of course it was” used for spying. “We’ve been watching them for a while,” they mentioned. That official declined to touch upon why the choice was taken now to shut the Houston consulate.
Instead, Assistant Attorney General John Demers mentioned the administration moved in opposition to the Houston consulate to disrupt China’s theft of protection and commerce secrets and techniques after a “slow buildup” of exercise. “It wasn’t so much one particular thing but a slow buildup of what we’ve been seeing over time and a decision made to take a strong step to not just confront it in a general sense but to actually disrupt it by closing that consulate,” Demers mentioned.
Former officers had been perplexed. Danny Russell, the previous Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs who left the division in 2017, mentioned that when he was at State and the National Security Council, “the Chinese consulate in Houston did not have a particular reputation as an acute vector of espionage.”
“It is very hard for me to figure out what China could do uniquely from its consulate in Houston that it could not equally well do from its consulates in Boston, LA, or NY, from the embassy in DC or through non-official cover,” Russell mentioned. “It is inconceivable that shutting down a consulate will stop espionage.”
“The drama of this action makes it seem like a teaser for Pompeo’s” speech Thursday, Russell added. “This has a very distinct wag-the-dog feel to it.”
CNN’s James Griffiths in Hong Kong, and Jamie Crawford, David Shortell, Zachary Cohen and Jennifer Hansler in Washington contributed to this report
[ad_2]
Source link