China wants US consulate general out in Chengdu, according to the latest announcement of China's Foreign Ministry.
The Foreign Ministry of China will revoke the license for the US consulate general in the southwestern Chinese city of Chengdu.
Based on its online statement, the ministry also ordered the consulate general to halt its operations.
“The current situation between China and the US is something the Chinese side does not want to see,” the foreign ministry said in an online Chinese-language statement, based on a CNBC translation.
“The responsibility lies entirely with the U.S. side,” the statement added. “We again urge the U.S. side to immediately revoke its relevant wrong decisions, to create necessary conditions for the two countries’ relationship to return to normal.”
The Chengdu consular district is where the controversial autonomous region of Tibet is located. It also covers the municipality of Chongqing as well as the provinces of Sichuan, Yunnan and Guizhou, based on the consulate’s website.
The Foreign Ministry's announcement comes after the US ordered China to shut its consulate in Houston. According to US State Department spokesperson Morgan Ortagus, the decision to cease the operations of China’s consulate general in Houston aims to protect American intellectual property and the data of its citizens. Beijing slammed the decision and threatened the US of firm countermeasures.
Eurasia Group’s Michael Hirson said that “if they were to choose an important but still secondary consulate like Chengdu or Shenyang, that would be in keeping with the role that the Houston consulate serves.”
Hirson pointed out that closing the consulates in Shanghai or Guangzhou “would be a notch above Houston.”
“If they were to close the Hong Kong consulate, that would be then thrusting this dispute into what’s already very serious impasse of course with the future of Hong Kong and Hong Kong’s autonomy,” he said. “So I think that would be the most escalatory move in terms of closing the consulate.”
US-China tension
The ministry's order is just one of the consequences of the tension brewing between the top two economies in the world. And this may escalate, according to the Eurasia Group.
“There’s a lot of room for escalation here. I think that it’s, by now, quite clear that we’re in for the darkest chapter yet of U.S.-China relations,” Todd Mariano, director for U.S. at Eurasia Group, said during CNBC’s “Squawk Box Asia."
“We’re seeing moves now more on the technology and export front. I think the troubling sign is simply the multiplicity of fronts at which the two countries are fighting or preparing to fight,” he said.
US-China tension is rooted in several areas, such as their trade imbalance and competition in technology. This sparked a tariff war that may damage the world economy.
US and China have fought over a wider range of issues, including the origin of the coronavirus and Hong Kong’s autonomy.
The US-China conflict is a “lose-lose” situation for both sides, according to a political science professor from Harvard University.
Graham Allison, Harvard’s Douglas Dillon professor of government, said that the tension between the world’s major economies, US and China, may worsen. He added that the result is a “lose-lose” situation for both sides.
“The endgame will probably be lose-lose,” he said during an interview with CNBC’s “Squawk Box Asia.”
