China accuses US of 'malicious slander' over Houston spying claims

Chinese comments come 24 hours after Texas consulate ordered to close

China has hit back at Washington’s claims that its consulate in Houston is stealing US intellectual property, calling it “malicious slander”.

The US has ordered China to close the consulate by Saturday “to protect American intellectual property and Americans’ private information”, while Beijing has threatened retaliation.

A spokesman for China’s foreign ministry, Wang Wenbin, also denied claims that a Chinese reacher accused of visa fraud and concealing ties to the military was now holed up in China’s consulate in San Francisco.

Speaking at a daily news conference in Beijing, Mr Wang said China urged the US to stop using any excuse to limit, harass or crack down on Chinese scholars in the country.

Federal prosecutors had on Wednesday alleged that a biology researcher, Tang Juan, concealed her connections to the Chinese People’s Liberation Army when applying for a US visa.

She was said to have fled to the Chinese consulate in San Francisco following an interview with the FBI, said the bureau, to avoid arrest.

It comes after prosecutors charged two Chinese hackers over attempts to steal data from facilities in Texas, including the Texas A&M medical system statewide and The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Centre in Houston.

The ensuing row marks a dramatic escalation in fraught relations between the world’s two largest economies amid disputes on trade, Hong Kong, military assertiveness and the Covid-19 pandemic.

In a statement on Thursday, China’s embassy in Washington accused the US of “groundless fabrications” about the actions of China’s diplomatic missions and urged it to “immediately revoke this erroneous decision”.

“It’s time to step on the brakes and return to the right direction!” the embassy added on Twitter.

Chinese state media, meanwhile, said the US was attempting to pin the blame on Beijing for it’s own failures ahead of Novembers’ presidential election.

The official English-language China Daily newspaper described the Houston consulate closure as “a new gambit in the US administration’s bid to paint China as a malevolent actor on the world stage, and thus make it an outlaw to the international community”.

It continued: “The move shows that lagging behind his presidential election opponent in the polls ... the US leader is going all out in his attempts to portray China as an agent of evil”.

The US president, whose popularity has slumped since the coronavirus pandemic struck in March, was seen trailing his Democratic rival Joe Biden by eight percentage points in a recent Reuters/IPSOS latest poll.