by DAVID P. GOLDMAN
Beijing may not fully react to the closure of its Houston consulate until after the US presidential election
Both official and unofficial responses to Washington’s closing of the Chinese consulate in Houston were notably restrained, suggesting that China doesn’t consider it worthwhile to pick a fight with the United States until the votes are counted in the US presidential election in November. With President Donald Trump lagging former Vice President Joe Biden by around 10 percentage points in most polls, China is running out the clock rather than escalating in return.
The lead commentary in Global Times, China’s official English-language newspaper, portrayed the consulate closing as a negotiating ploy in an ongoing dispute between the US and China about testing and quarantine measures for US diplomats returning to China. That stands in marked contrast to the State Department’s statement about the consulate, which linked the measure to China’s alleged predatory economic practices and industrial espionage. Global Times quotes Wu Xinbo, dean of the international relations faculty at Shanghai’s Fudan University, on the consulate closing:
According to my understanding, it is a move to pressure Beijing to get more US diplomats back to their posts in China. Since the outbreak of the Covid-19, the US had hurriedly evacuated quite a number of American diplomats and citizens from China. Now Washington believes it is time for them to continue their China mission. Yet negotiations on their return did not go quite smoothly.
The US has postponed flights for dozens of its diplomats who had planned to return to China “after failing to reach agreement with Beijing over issues including Covid-19 testing and quarantine,” according to a Reuters report on July 1.
However, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said on July 2 that China’s quarantine measures “apply equally to all foreign diplomatic missions to China.”
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Both official and unofficial responses to Washington’s closing of the Chinese consulate in Houston were notably restrained, suggesting that China doesn’t consider it worthwhile to pick a fight with the United States until the votes are counted in the US presidential election in November. With President Donald Trump lagging former Vice President Joe Biden by around 10 percentage points in most polls, China is running out the clock rather than escalating in return.
The lead commentary in Global Times, China’s official English-language newspaper, portrayed the consulate closing as a negotiating ploy in an ongoing dispute between the US and China about testing and quarantine measures for US diplomats returning to China. That stands in marked contrast to the State Department’s statement about the consulate, which linked the measure to China’s alleged predatory economic practices and industrial espionage. Global Times quotes Wu Xinbo, dean of the international relations faculty at Shanghai’s Fudan University, on the consulate closing:
According to my understanding, it is a move to pressure Beijing to get more US diplomats back to their posts in China. Since the outbreak of the Covid-19, the US had hurriedly evacuated quite a number of American diplomats and citizens from China. Now Washington believes it is time for them to continue their China mission. Yet negotiations on their return did not go quite smoothly.
The US has postponed flights for dozens of its diplomats who had planned to return to China “after failing to reach agreement with Beijing over issues including Covid-19 testing and quarantine,” according to a Reuters report on July 1.
However, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said on July 2 that China’s quarantine measures “apply equally to all foreign diplomatic missions to China.”
Asia Times for more