Assistant Secretary of State Steve Biegun on Wednesday noted “a growing number of disputes” between the United States and China over Beijing’s “increasingly harsh and aggressive actions” that have prompted the administration to take action, including the closure of the consulate in Houston.
Jeff Moon, a former deputy U.S. trade representative for China, noted that the State Department said the Houston order was a response to China’s theft of intellectual property and raised questions about why only a consulate was attacked.
“If that was the real reason, the United States would shut down the San Francisco consulate, which covers Silicon Valley,” said Moon, who was among those who suggested that the policy may be working. “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 said the consulate was ordered to close “to protect American intellectual property and private information from Americans,” but did not immediately provide additional details about what caused the closing. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who is scheduled to deliver a speech on China on Thursday and has just completed a trip in Europe to urge a tougher stance against Beijing, declined to offer details on the consulate’s decision. The State Department did not respond to requests for further explanations.
Senator Angus King, a Maine independent who meets with Democrats, told CNN’s John Berman on the “New Day” on Wednesday that he was unaware of any “recent intelligence on particular Chinese activities, nor regarding our elections, or the entire confrontation between our two countries: theft of intellectual property “that may have prompted the decision.
A former official who left the Trump administration last year said Trump often rejected advisers who urged him to impose tougher punitive measures on China for fear it would jeopardize trade negotiations.
Still, when Covid-19 began to devastate public and economic health in the U.S., the President’s Republican allies and influential White House staff, including Jared Kushner, began to argue that a way to energize the base The president’s policy is to criticize China for its failure to stop the spread of the disease from the start, administration officials and three people familiar with Kushner’s thinking have told CNN.
Moon, who now heads China Moon Strategies, a consultancy on trade and economic relations between the United States and China, said that targeting the Houston consulate was one way for the President to thread the needle between looking tough but not taking much risk.
The governments of the US and China informally pair their consulates, with the Houston facilities in China informally linked to the US consulate in Wuhan. Moon said the Wuhan consulate reportedly remains closed due to the coronavirus, “so that China can ‘shut down’ and escalate diplomatic warfare as little as possible.”
A ‘great network of spies’
On Wednesday, Biegun told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that Trump moved to close the consulate due to mounting aggression from China.
Biegun noted “the commercial espionage and theft of intellectual property by American companies; the unequal treatment of our diplomats, companies, NGOs and journalists by the Chinese authorities; and the abuse of the academic freedom of the United States and the position Welcome international students to steal sensitive technology and research from our universities to advance the PRC’s military capabilities. “
“It is these factors that led the President to direct a series of actions in response, including yesterday’s notification to the PRC that we have withdrawn our consent for the PRC to operate its consulate in Houston, Texas,” he said.
On Wednesday, Trump said “it is always possible” that he will order the closure of more Chinese consulates, adding that US officials thought there was a fire at the Houston consulate, but apparently “they were burning documents.”
Republican Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, acting chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, wrote on Twitter on Wednesday that shutting down the Houston consulate “had to happen” and claimed he was a “central node of the Party’s vast network of spies Communist”.
When asked about that allegation, a current US intelligence official agreed and told CNN that “of course it was” used to spy. “We have been watching them for a while,” they said. That official declined to comment on why the decision was now made to close the Houston consulate.
Instead, Deputy Attorney General John Demers said the administration moved against the Houston consulate to stop the theft of China’s defense and trade secrets after a “slow build-up” of activity. “It was not so much one thing in particular, but a slow accumulation of what we have been seeing over time and the decision to take a strong step to not only confront it in a general sense, but really interrupt it by closing that consulate,” he said. Demers.
The former officials were puzzled. Danny Russell, a former Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia and Pacific Affairs who left the department in 2017, said that when he was with the State and the National Security Council, “the Chinese consulate in Houston did not have a particular reputation as a sharp spy vector. “
“It is very difficult for me to discover what China could do uniquely from its consulate in Houston that it could not do equally from its consulates in Boston, Los Angeles or New York, from the embassy in DC or through unofficial coverage,” he said. Russell. “It is inconceivable that closing a consulate will stop espionage.”
“The drama of this action makes it look like a preview of Pompeo’s speech on Thursday,” added Russell. “This has a very different feeling of wagging the dog.”
James Griffiths of CNN in Hong Kong, and Jamie Crawford, David Shortell, Zachary Cohen and Jennifer Hansler in Washington contributed to this report.
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