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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Chinese government has warned Washington that it could detain Americans in China in response to the Justice Department’s prosecution of academics affiliated with the Chinese military, the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday.
The newspaper, citing anonymous people familiar with the matter, said that Chinese officials had issued repeated warnings through multiple channels to US government officials.
The newspaper said the message from China was that the United States should end prosecutions of Chinese academics in American courts, or Americans in China could violate Chinese law.
A Sept. 14 State Department notice warning against travel to China said the Chinese government uses arbitrary detentions and exit bans for US citizens and others “to gain bargaining influence over foreign governments.”
The White House referred the questions to the State Department, which said in an emailed statement that emphasizes “to the Chinese government, even at the highest levels, our concern over China’s coercive use of exit bans on U.S. citizens and citizens of other countries, and will continue to do so until we see a transparent and fair process. “
The Chinese embassy in Washington did not respond to a request for comment on Saturday.
The Trump administration has increasingly accused China of suing cyber operations and espionage to steal technological, military and other knowledge from the United States in a strategy to supplant the United States as the world’s leading financial and military power. Beijing denies the accusations.
In July, the Justice Department said the FBI had arrested three Chinese nationals for allegedly concealing memberships in the People’s Liberation Army when applying for visas to conduct research at American academic institutions.
Last month, the United States said it had revoked visas for more than 1,000 Chinese nationals under a presidential measure that denied entry to students and researchers they viewed as security risks, a move that China called a violation of human rights.
At the time, a State Department spokeswoman said the United States continued to welcome “legitimate students and academics from China who do not advance the Chinese Communist Party’s aims of military rule.”
(Reporting by David Shepardson and Andrea Shalal; Edited by Daniel Wallis)
