Saturday 25 July 2020

there is an old vulcan proverb

With no sense of irony, the US Secretary of State announced during a speech earlier in the week delivered at the Richard Milhous Nixon Presidential Library in Yorba Linda, California, that the “old paradigm of blind engagement with China” had become untenable, and subsequently closed and ordered the expulsion of diplomatic staff in its consulate in Houston—characterising the operation as hub for industrial espionage.
Outside the embassy in Washington, DC the Texas compound was the first for China once relations had been normalised in 1979. In response, Chinese officials ordered the closure of the American consulate in the city of Sichuan capital Chengdu (see previously). These heightened tensions come on top of ongoing trade disputes and deflecting the failure of the US to contain the spread of COVID-19 infections by vociferously blaming China.