The United States ordered China to close its consulate in Houston — and Sen. Marco Rubio, R-F.L., praised the move as something that was long overdue.

Rubio called the closed center a “central node” in a massive Chinese Communist Party spy network that had infiltrated the United States.

#China’s Houston consulate is a massive spy center, forcing it to close is long overdue.

— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) July 22, 2020

#China’s consulate in #Houston is not a diplomatic facility. It is the central node of the Communist Party’s vast network of spies & influence operations in the United States. Now that building must close & the spies have 72 hours to leave or face arrest.

This needed to happen.

— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) July 22, 2020

The move comes amid President Donald Trump’s increasingly punitive measures against China ahead of the November U.S. election. Beijing denounced the order Wednesday as “outrageous” and said it would draw a firm response if not reversed.

The physical closure of the consulate, one of China’s six missions in the United States, marked a dramatic step in increasingly contentious relations that have been strained not only by the coronavirus pandemic but disputes over trade, human rights, Hong Kong, and illegal Chinese territorial claims in the South China Sea.

Previous Trump administration measures against Chinese officials, students, and researchers have included travel bans, registration requirements, and other steps intended to reduce the country’s footprint in the United States. The administration has also announced its outright rejection of virtually all Chinese maritime claims in the South China Sea.

These actions have come as Trump has sought to blame China for the coronavirus outbreak in the U.S., where cases have soared, threatening his prospects for reelection. Trump himself said more closures could be coming if China doesn’t change its behavior. “It’s always possible,” he told reporters at the White House.

The State Department said it ordered the consulate closed within 72 hours after alleging that Chinese agents have tried to steal data from facilities in Texas, including the Texas A&M medical system statewide and The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.

There were indications consulate staff were preparing to leave: Papers were being burned on the consulate grounds late Tuesday night — a common practice when a diplomatic post is being shuttered on short notice.

State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus said in a statement that the closure was “to protect American intellectual property and Americans’ private information.”

“The United States will not tolerate (China’s) violations of our sovereignty and intimidation of our people, just as we have not tolerated (China’s) unfair trade practices, theft of American jobs, and other egregious behavior,” she said.

Testifying before Congress on Wednesday, Deputy Secretary of State Stephen Biegun lamented that relations today are “weighed down by a growing number of disputes,” including commercial espionage, intellectual property theft, and unequal treatment of diplomats, businesses, and journalists.

Those factors led to Trump’s action, he told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

The Department of Justice on Tuesday had announced the indictments of two Chinese hackers on charges of trying to steal pharmaceutical secrets from U.S. companies related to the COVID-19 pandemic that originated in China. Although there was no indication the indictments and the consulate action were related, the U.S. has long alleged China is involved in nefarious activity around the country, including from its Houston consulate.

Even before the U.S. announced the closure, which was conveyed privately to the Chinese ambassador on Tuesday, China strongly condemned it.

“The unilateral closure of China’s consulate general in Houston within a short period of time is an unprecedented escalation of its recent actions against China,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said. He warned of firm countermeasures if the U.S. does not reverse itself.

Wang accused the U.S. of opening Chinese diplomatic pouches without permission multiple times, confiscating Chinese items for official use and imposing restrictions on Chinese diplomats beginning last October and again in June. He also said that U.S. diplomats in China engage in infiltration activities.

In Houston, firefighters responded to reports of papers being burned on the consulate grounds Tuesday night but were barred entry. On Wednesday afternoon, consulate staff could be seen loading cleaning supplies and paper products into a van parked outside the building. A U-Haul truck was also parked outside the consulate

First responders “were told that people inside the consulate, that they were burning paperwork because they were in the process of being evacuated from the building,” Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner said.

Foreign diplomatic missions operate under legal immunities accorded by international law and may not be entered without permission. However, the destruction of confidential documents at a facility that has been ordered or otherwise forced to close on short notice, including U.S. missions, is not unusual. Most recently in the United States, Russia’s consulate in San Francisco made news for burning large amounts of material when it was ordered closed in 2017.

In addition to its embassy in Washington and its mission to the United Nations in New York, China has consulates in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles. In an apparent bid to stave off the reciprocal closure of an American diplomatic mission in China, the State Department told the Chinese that it would not reopen its consulate in Wuhan, according to two U.S. officials who were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

The U.S. consulate in Wuhan was shuttered in late January at the height of the coronavirus outbreak that started there, but the State Department had informed Congress in early June that it planned to reopen it, possibly this summer.

Besides Wuhan, the U.S. has four other consulates in China — in Shanghai, Guangzhou, Chengdu, and Shenyang — along with its embassy in Beijing and a consulate general in Hong Kong.

#China consulate was a spy shop pic.twitter.com/UdRlmh7kVc

— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) July 22, 2020

 

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The Associated Press contributed to this article