U.S. Orders China to Close Houston Consulate

By

The State Department, in a statement on the closure, accused China of conducting “massive illegal spying and influence operations throughout the United States against U.S. government officials and American citizens,” and said such activities have increased in recent years.

The closure order, first made public by Beijing, coincided with Washington’s unveiling on Tuesday of indictments against two hackers in China. They have been accused of targeting American firms involved in coronavirus research and stealing hundreds of millions of dollars in sensitive information from companies around the world while working on behalf of Beijing’s main civilian intelligence agency.

In Houston, firefighters and police officers had responded Tuesday evening to calls related to the Chinese Consulate, where smoke was seen rising from an outdoor courtyard area, local police said. Footage aired by local television stations purportedly showed people burning documents on the consulate’s premises.

Washington’s demand opened a new front in President Trump’s efforts to pressure China in a duel between the world’s two-largest economies over trade, technological and military competition, geopolitical influence and the coronavirus pandemic.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, citing the hacking indictments and U.S. jobs he said were stolen by Beijing’s policies, said China had been given clear expectations and that Washington would take actions that protect the American people when those expectations aren’t met.

“President Trump has said, ‘Enough, we’re not going to allow this to continue to happen,’” Mr. Pompeo told reporters at a briefing in Copenhagen, Denmark.

The Trump administration has already imposed visa restrictions, sanctions and other curbs on Chinese officials and entities over recent weeks, and has considered an entry ban against members of China’s Communist Party and their families—a move that could affect hundreds of millions of Chinese.

Beijing has countered each time with heated criticism and retaliatory measures, and did so again following the closure order against its consulate.

“This is a political provocation unilaterally launched by the U.S.,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said Wednesday. “China urges the U.S. to immediately rescind its erroneous decision, otherwise China will undertake legitimate and necessary responses.”

Morgan Ortagus, a spokeswoman for the State Department, didn’t specify what prompted Washington to target the Houston consulate. “The United States will not tolerate the PRC’s violations of our sovereignty and intimidation of our people, just as we have not tolerated the PRC’s unfair trade practices, theft of American jobs and other egregious behavior,” Ms. Ortagus said, using an abbreviation of the People’s Republic of China.

The U.S. ordered Russia in 2016 and 2017 to close down diplomatic facilities in retaliation for Moscow’s meddling in the 2016 US presidential elections.

Over the four decades since U.S. and China restored diplomatic relations, they have expelled diplomatic personnel for spying and other activities. But the shutdown order for the Houston consulate is the first time the U.S. has taken such a move against China.

U.S. officials have become increasingly concerned in recent years about Beijing’s use of its Washington embassy and the five consulates it maintains around the country to further espionage and political influence operations, according to people familiar with the matter. The consulate in Houston has drawn particular scrutiny.

The FBI has monitored for years people believed to be intelligence officers operating from China’s Houston consulate, these people said.

In a February speech to the National Governors Association, Mr. Pompeo read an excerpt from a letter he said was sent by China’s Consul General in New York to the speaker of a U.S. state legislature instructing the politician to “avoid engaging in any official contact with Taiwan,” a longstanding sore point for Beijing. The letter, Mr. Pompeo said, urged the American politician to refrain from sending congratulatory messages to Taiwanese officials, inviting them to the U.S. or introducing Taiwan-related bills in the legislature.

Mr. Pompeo told governors that this type of activity was occurring at consulates all across the country and cited a recent incident in which a former governor received a letter from a diplomat in the Chinese consulate in Houston in which the official threatened to cancel an investment from China if the governor chose to travel to Taiwan.

In the same speech, Mr. Pompeo also referred to reporting by The Wall Street Journal that an investigation by the Texas A&M University System, based in College Station near Houston, discovered that the Chinese government had targeted more than 100 of its academics in talent-recruitment programs to benefit the Chinese state.

All of the targeted researchers worked in fields identified by Beijing as priorities for scientific advancement, a school official told the Journal. Beijing has denied attempting any systematic effort to steal U.S. scientific research, and Chinese state media have said the U.S. is using allegations of intellectual-property theft as a political tool.

Officials didn’t specify the deadline given for the consulate to shut down. Hu Xijin, the editor in chief of Communist Party tabloid Global Times, tweeted Wednesday that the consulate was ordered to shut down within 72 hours.

Mr. Wang, the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman, also accused the U.S. of violating international law and reneging on a bilateral consular agreement. He said Washington has for some time been harassing Chinese diplomatic personnel in the U.S. and intimidating Chinese students.

Mr. Wang said the U.S. imposed restrictions on Chinese diplomatic staff twice in the past year, without providing details. He also said the U.S. had opened Chinese diplomatic bags on multiple occasions without permission and confiscated unspecified items for official use.

Diplomatic bags aren’t supposed to be opened or detained by host countries under the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, which the U.S. and China are both parties to.

On Wednesday, the Chinese Foreign Ministry issued a warning about “rapidly increased cases of arbitrary interrogation, nuisance, confiscation of personal belongings, and detention of Chinese students studying in the United States,” and urged students to take precautions.

Travel between the U.S. and China has virtually stalled because of the coronavirus pandemic, while the two governments have reduced services at diplomatic missions in each other’s territory.

The Chinese Consulate in Houston suspended visa services in early April, citing public-health and safety risks. American officials said last month that they were planning to reopen the U.S. Consulate in the central Chinese city of Wuhan—where the new coronavirus was first detected—after shutting down the facility in January because of the pandemic.

—Courtney McBride, William Mauldin and Kate O’Keeffe contributed to this article.

Write to Chun Han Wong at chunhan.wong@wsj.com