By Caribbean News Global 
WASHINGTON, USA – The United States notified China on Tuesday that it must close the consulate in Houston within 72 hours. The move is an escalation of political tensions between the world’s two largest economies. President Donald Trump has frequently criticized China for a lack of transparency about the coronavirus.
On Tuesday, a federal grand jury in Spokane, Washington, returned an indictment earlier this month charging two hackers, both nationals and residents of the People’s Republic of China (China), with hacking into the computer systems of hundreds of victim companies, governments, non-governmental organizations, and individual dissidents, clergy, and democratic and human rights activists in the United States and abroad, including Hong Kong and China. […] The hackers stole terabytes of data which comprised a sophisticated and prolific threat to U.S. networks.
The 11-count indictment alleges LI Xiaoyu 34, and DONG Jiazhi 33, who were trained in computer applications technologies at the same Chinese university, conducted a hacking campaign lasting more than ten years to the present, targeting companies in countries with high technology industries, including the United States, Australia, Belgium, Germany, Japan, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Spain, South Korea, Sweden, and the United Kingdom.
Wang Yi, the foreign minister, said last week that the United States had “lost its mind, morals and credibility,” accused anti-China hawks in the Trump administration of hang on to a Cold War mentality and even McCarthyism.
“The United States nakedly pursues its own policy priorities and pushes egoism, unilateralism and bullying to the extreme,” Wang said according to the statement. “This is nothing like how a major country should be.”
State Department spokesperson Morgan Ortagus said in a statement that the closure was “to protect American intellectual property and American’s private information.”
The Vienna Convention says diplomats must “respect the laws and regulations of the receiving State” and “have a duty not to interfere in the internal affairs of that State,” Ortagus continued. “The United States will not tolerate the (People’s Republican of China’s) violations of our sovereignty and intimidation of our people,” Ortagus said. It is unusual but not unprecedented for the US to close another country’s consulate.
Wang Wenbin, a spokesman for China’s foreign ministry, as an “unprecedented escalation” and said China would “react with firm countermeasures,” Wang said.”The US has far more diplomatic missions and staff working in China. So, if the US is bent on going down this wrong path, we will resolutely respond.” The US has consulates in Chengdu, Guangzhou, Shanghai, Shenyang and Wuhan.
Senator Marco Rubio, R-Fla., who chairs the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said in a tweet that “#China’s Houston consulate is a massive spy center” and added that “forcing it to close is long overdue.”
China’s consulate in Houston “is not a diplomatic facility” and suggested it is staffed with spies. “It is the central node of the Communist Party’s vast network of spies & influence operations in the United States … This needed to happen,” Rubio said. China also operates consulates in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, in addition to the embassy in Washington.
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