Meanwhile, Beijing has not publicly agreed to evacuate from its consulate in Houston.
Senior U. S. officials would not address Friday whether the Trump administration intends to comply with an order to close an American consulate in China, a move that comes on the heels of Washington’s forced closure of a Chinese consulate in Houston.
On Friday morning, China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs directed the U. S. Embassy in Beijing to cease operations at its consulate in Chengdu, a city in southwestern China’s Sichuan province.
China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said some U. S. Chengdu consulate personnel were «conducting activities not in line with their identities» and had harmed China’s security interests, but would not elaborate.
«The current situation in China-U. S. relations is not what China desires to see and the U. S. is responsible for all this. We once again urge the U. S. to immediately retract its wrong decision and create necessary conditions for bringing the bilateral relationship back on track,» he added.
