Closure of US consulate necessary act

Ministry urges Washington to correct its mistakes, get relations back on track

The closure and takeover of the United States' consulate in Chengdu is China's legitimate and necessary response to the unreasonable US act of shutting down and breaking into the Chinese consulate general in Houston, Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said on Monday.

As required by China, the US consulate in Chengdu was closed on Monday morning and Chinese authorities then entered and took over the premises, the ministry said in an online statement.

The act conforms with international law and the basic norms of international relations, Wang said at a daily news briefing.

He said that Washington bears full responsibility for the current situation between China and the US.

"We again urge the US to immediately correct its mistakes and create necessary conditions to bring bilateral relations back to normal," he added.

In an earlier statement, Wang noted that China deplores and firmly opposes the US move to forcibly enter China's consulate in Houston and has lodged solemn representations.

The Chinese consulate in Houston is China's diplomatic and consular premises and State property, he said, adding that according to the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations and the China-US Consular Convention, the US should not infringe upon the premises of the consulate in any way.

Amid worsening China-US relations, lawyers for Meng Wanzhou, chief financial officer of Chinese telecom giant Huawei, accused US authorities of misleading the Canadian court overseeing her extradition hearing, referring to new court filings released on Thursday.

"It is necessary for the Canadian government to explain to the public the defects in the evidence provided by the US. … We hear that the US is obstructing Canada from doing so," Wang said.

Meng's case is a political incident cooked up by the US aiming to suppress Chinese high-tech enterprises including Huawei, he said.

He noted that the longer Meng's case drags on, the greater it will harm China-Canada relations, urging Ottawa to clearly see Washington's political intentions and remove obstacles from its relationship with Beijing.