The Consulate closure in Chengdu: China’s well-measured vengeance

The Chinese government has decreed the closure of the American Consulate General in Chengdu. This is in response to the of America demanded the closure of your own Consulate General in Houston. With the retaliation of Beijing, chooses a middle ground. Unlike, apparently, of Washington hoped for, don’t aim it at the Consulate in Wuhan, which is already orphaned since February due to the Corona outbreak. This could be understood as a concession.

Friederike Böge

Political correspondent for East Asia.

F. A. Z. Twitter

At the same time, the government in Beijing, not the votes of nationalist hot, which had claimed spurs a withdrawal of the license for the much more important American Consulate General in Hong Kong. The fact that Beijing gave to these voices, even in the party newspaper “Global Times”, but it can be interpreted as a warning.

In Beijing, is seen the escalation in connection with the American election campaign and has been expected in some way. The guide is recognizable in an effort not to let the relations into a bottomless slip, to the possibility of a reset, hold open after the presidential election in November. At the same time the demands stoked nationalist sentiment in China that Beijing gives the impression that prior to the attacks from Washington back soft.

“Necessary response to an unjust act”

The Ministry of foreign Affairs in Beijing, spoke on Friday of a “legitimate and necessary response to an unjust act of the United States”. The tense situation in the relations between the two countries was not, “what China wants to see,” said the spokesman, and called on the American government, “to create the conditions necessary” to bring the relations back on an even keel.

The state news Agency Xinhua wrote in a commentary, the step-by-objectives “alone, with a few extremist forces in the American government, not the American people”. Beijing’s response to Comments made by foreign Minister Mike Pompeo, the aim of the Communist party and the Chinese population of dividing.

Pompeo called the Chinese Consulate General in Houston in a speech on Thursday, “a center for espionage and the theft of intellectual property”. Documents of the judicial authorities to bring to the Consulate in connection with investigations by the FBI, among others, for alleged illegal disclosure of research results. Behind them is the accusation that the Chinese military have selectively introduced, scientists in American universities, or those recruited to gain access to sensitive research data. The American side, however, has highlighted so far, no concrete cases which are with the Consulate in Houston in connection.