Top US envoy to China says zero-Covid restrictions block access to Americans, possibly violating agreement
- Ambassador Nicholas Burns suggested that his missions’ inability to visit US prisoners in China violates 1980 consular agreement
- Taiwan is ‘at the centre’ of US-China disagreements, he said, adding that ‘we want a peaceful relationship’
Nicholas Burns, the US ambassador to Beijing, said strict enforcement of pandemic rules has made it difficult to visit Chinese ministries or US consulates around the country, move consular staff in and out of the country or attend to American prisoners held in Chinese jails, in addition to the frustration it has created for many ordinary Chinese.
“We haven’t been able to get in to see most of the American prisoners here for the last three years because the government here has used, they said that for Covid reasons, for precautionary reasons, they won’t let our diplomats into these prisons,” he said, speaking to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs by video from Beijing.
“I fundamentally objected to that,” he said. “We have a right under our 1980 consular agreement to see American prisoners.”
“Life here is difficult because the Covid restrictions are so severe. There are reasons for them, given by the government of China. I don’t want to debate those publicly. I want to be respectful, but” they have a different view, he said. “So we’ll just have to see how this plays out. It’s obviously a very important event for the people of China.”
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The Chinese embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Rubio, a Republican from Florida, is one of the US Congress’s most vocal critics of Beijing.
“His credentials are unimpeachable, but Senator Marco Rubio is using Burns,” Esquire magazine said in a November 2021 article. Rubio is “not only hamstringing the administration, he’s doing it in without having to back up anything he says. He’s a legislative stalker”.
Other factors have challenged Burns in his current role.
“They have shut down most of our channels of communication – eight specific ones, military and civilian. They won’t talk to us,” Burns said in a Foreign Affairs interview last month. “I do have contact with the Foreign Ministry; we’ve had a series of contentious meetings.
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“I must say, we want to get to a place where we can air our differences in a very detailed way, and get beyond our talking points.”
Burns’ lack of diplomatic access in Beijing may undercut future US-China relations.
Frustrated by the closed doors Burns has faced in Beijing, the White House levelled some of the same treatment in recent months on China’s ambassador to Washington, Qin Gang, analysts said.
“Nick Burns is not getting great access in Beijing, so there’s been some desire for reciprocity,” said one analyst with close ties to the administration. “If Nick Burns is not getting great access in Beijing, we’re not going to give him great access here.”
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Burns has walked a fine line in Beijing, espousing US policies that are unpopular in China even as he has tried to bolster bilateral ties. In mid-August, he called on Beijing to prove it’s not an “agent of instability” after its strong military reaction to the Pelosi visit, which he called a “manufactured crisis” on CNN.
“China should respect the status quo in the Taiwan Strait, act peacefully, not disturb what has been a peaceful Taiwan Strait for the last 68 years,” Burns said Tuesday. “It’s an issue that’s the centre of our disagreements with the People’s Republic of China.”
China views Taiwan as a breakaway province to be reunited by force if necessary. Few countries, including the US, recognise the self-governing island as an independent state.
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When the US embassy uploaded a speech to Weibo by Secretary of State Antony Blinken on US-China relations in May, it was blocked within two and a half hours. A second attempt two days later saw it taken down in 20 minutes.
“We’re subjected to censorship here,” he told Foreign Affairs. “But you know, in those two and a half hours or 20 minutes, a significant number of people saw his speech.”
China believes the US is a declining power and that it is the ascendant power, Burns told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in testimony last year, adding that he disagrees.
“We assume that that competitive side of the relationship is going to be with us for quite some time, because of these structural, philosophical, ideological, national security differences that we have with China,” Burns told the Chicago audience Tuesday. “We do not want this relationship to end up in conflict. We want a peaceful relationship with China.”
Additional reporting by Robert Delaney