A worker removes the Great Seal of the United States from the front of the US consulate in the Chinese city of Chengdu on Saturday. AFP/Noel Celis
AFP
ON THE WEB, 24 July 2020
Staff at the US consulate in the Chinese city of Chengdu were busy packing belongings and removing the American insignia from the building on Saturday, a day after Beijing ordered its closure in a tit-for-tat diplomatic battle with Washington.
US-China relations spiralled this week when the Chengdu mission was told to shut in retaliation for the forced closure of Beijing’s consulate in Houston, Texas, with both sides alleging the other had endangered national security.
The deadline for the Americans to exit Chengdu remains unclear but AFP reporters saw cleaners carting big black bags of rubbish from the consulate Saturday, one of which had split and appeared to contain shredded paper.
At least ten sacks were removed from the building in the early hours of the morning.
A worker on a small crane removed a circular US insignia from the front of the consulate, leaving just an American flag flying.
Other staff were seen moving trolleys around inside, one carrying a large empty metal bin, while some wheeled suitcases.
Beijing says closing the Chengdu consulate was a “legitimate and necessary response to the unreasonable measures by the United States”, and has alleged that staff at the diplomatic mission endangered China’s security and interests.
Washington officials meanwhile said there had been unacceptable efforts by the Chinese consulate in Houston to steal US corporate secrets and proprietary medical and scientific research.
The last Chinese diplomats left the Houston consulate on Friday as a 72-hour deadline to close the mission passed. Officials there were seen loading large sacks of documents and other items onto trucks and throwing some in bins.
Tensions have soared between the two powers on a range of fronts including trade, China’s handling of the coronavirus and a new security law for Hong Kong, with the US this week warning of a “new tyranny” from China.
For the Chinese, closing the Chengdu American consulate was a blessing in disguise. Chengdu was a Tibetan border town but it was gradually overrun by Chinese. Today, there are Tibetans living there but much like the American Indians in their own land. What has happened to this town is a sign of things to come for the whole of occupied Tibet.
The US and India have been demanding to open a consulate of their respective countries in the Tibetan capital – Lhasa, for years. The Chinese have consistently resisted and have denied that demand. The reason is simple.
They fear that the US and India, it’s arch rivals, will spy on what China is doing in Tibet and get Information it doesn’t want the rest of the world to know.
India had its consulate in independent Tibet but withdrew it after the 1962 Sino-India war. Only Nepal retains its consulate today.
With the Americans sent packing from Chengdu, the last foreign mission on Tibetan soil, the Chinese will breath a sigh of relief that there will be no one who can monitor the goings on in Tibetan areas any more.
Since, no one can visit Tibetan areas without strictly controlled by the Chinese, occupied Tibet is even more isolated with the removal of the US office there. However, as the relationship between the US and China dips to an all time low, America will pull no punches any more against Chinese atrocities in Chinese occupied territories like Tibet and E Turkistan.
Tibetans should demand America to revoke the US Government’s endorsement of Chinese claims to Tibet just as it has sounded the clarion call that Chinese claim to South China Sea is illegal. China used deception and diplomatic arm twisting to legitimise its claim but in reality Tibet was never part of China at any time in its long history.