It is a universally accepted international convention that diplomatic facilities can be used as cover for espionage activities. But the system only works if states pretend not to acknowledge it.
So the decision last week by the Trump administration to shutter the Chinese Consulate in Houston over allegations that China used it for spying set off a predictable diplomatic firestorm.
- Beijing retaliated by ordering the U.S. Consulate in the western Chinese city of Chengdu closed.
The big picture: No major diplomatic incident or significant norm-breaking act of espionage between the two economic superpowers preceded the Houston closure.
- Thats unlike the administrations targeted 2017 closure of the Russian Consulate in San Francisco, which was a reverberation from Moscows covert interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, and its 2018 shuttering of the Russian Consulate in Seattle, which was explicitly linked to Moscows use of the worlds deadliest nerve gas on a Russian defector in the U.K.
Details: After the closure announcement, the New York Times obtained a dossier that broadly outlined investigations by FBI counterintelligence into espionage and influence activities emanating from the facility. These included:
- Attempted medically focused intellectual property theft.
- The courting of local academics performing sensitive research.
- Hard-edged pressure on Chinese dissidents in the area.
Yes, but: Jarring as it may sound, this is unremarkable activity for a Chinese consular establishment.
- Though its collection priorities differ, the U.S. also conducts widespread intelligence operations out of its diplomatic facilities abroad.
- Indeed, in 2016, China reportedly snatched, accosted and temporarily detained a suspected U.S. intelligence operative off the streets of Chengdu. This person was formally working out of the now-shuttered U.S. Consulate there.
Bluntly, countries spy on each other, and they do it out of embassies and consulates. (Chinas kidnapping of this U.S. operative, however, was a significant violation of the unofficial rules of the game.)
- The Chinese Consulate in Houston wasnt even one of its top-tier facilities for intelligence collection within the U.S., say former intelligence officials.
- It was the lowest priority of all the consulates for U.S. counter-spies, said a former senior counterintelligence official.
- The Houston consulate was not a hotbed, but there was certainly enough intelligence activity emanating from there, said another former senior intelligence official.
The Houston closure without a doubt hurts Chinas intelligence collection capabilities domestically, and U.S. officials have said that the FBI strongly supported the move.
- In the past, there have been a few well-identified intelligence officers operating out of the facility, said the second former senior intelligence official, including one recently engaged in blatant handling of a human asset at a large American company.
But China doesnt generally emphasize using its diplomatic outposts for spying, say intelligence officials. Instead, it employs an amorphous mix of operatives from graduate researchers to tourists to pro-Beijing community leaders to carry many of its collection priorities.
- Indeed, Chinese spies under diplomatic cover in the U.S. have often had a narrow focus, says the former senior counterintelligence official.
- They were more concerned about keeping tabs on overseas Chinese, says this person. It was an internal security issue for them.
China has also been engaged in a well-documented cyber espionage spree targeting U.S. intellectual property, vast tranches of personally identifiable information, as well as defense and other technology secrets.
- None of these activities will be affected by closing a single diplomatic outpost. It wont deter them domestically, says the former senior intelligence official.
Between the lines: The Houston closure may have been designed to send a general warning to China about Beijings ubiquitous spying, and Houston may have been selected precisely because it is such a low-profile facility.
But there are also potential costs to the U.S.s actions. For instance, we don’t know what the CIA thinks of the move.
- It relies on Americas diplomatic outposts abroad for its own spying, and now, with the shuttering of the U.S. Consulate in Chengdu, it just lost its window into western China.
- And how might the Chengdu closure affect the State Departments insight into Chinas vast repression of the Uighurs in Xinjiang, or the political, economic and public health situation in western China more broadly?
The bottom line: The Trump administrations moves against Russias diplomatic facilities in San Francisco and Seattle were carefully calibrated reactions to major normative violations of U.S. and U.K. sovereignty. But the rationale for the Houston closure rests on far murkier grounds.
- Many will wonder whether, in this case, the Trump administration let politics the desire to ratchet up pressure on China, which it blames for the pandemic eclipse the prerogatives of national security.
Go deeper:China’s consulates do a lot more than spy