China claims prejudice as US shortens visas for Communist Party members

Name: Banning 92 million Communist Party members from America ‘ridiculous’, Beijing says
Uploaded: 2020-12-03T13:30:17.000Z
Duration: 3 min 1 s
Description: Banning 92 million Communist Party members from America ‘ridiculous’, Beijing says

New rules reportedly limit validity of travel visas for party members and families to a month and single entry

Beijing calls it ‘political oppression against China by the anti-China extremist forces in the US’

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Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said the visa rule reflected “ideological prejudice”. Photo: Reuters

Catherine Wong

Published: 9:30pm, 3 Dec 2020Updated: 9:30pm, 3 Dec 2020

China on Thursday said it had protested against the latest US visa restriction on Chinese Communist Party members and their families.

Donald Trump’s administration had a day earlier issued new rules to limit the validity of travel visas for Communist Party members and their immediate relatives to one month and a single entry, The New York Times reported.

Previously, all Chinese citizens could obtain US visitor visas of up to 10 years’ duration. The new measures do not affect party members’ eligibility for other kinds of visas, such as for immigration applications, the newspaper quoted a person familiar with the matter as saying.

The newspaper quoted a state department spokesman as saying that the move was part of the “ongoing policy, regulatory and law-enforcement action across the US government to protect our nation from the CCP’s malign influence”.

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Banning 92 million Communist Party members from America ‘ridiculous’, Beijing says

“For decades, we allowed the CCP free and unfettered access to US institutions and businesses while these same privileges were never extended freely to US citizens in China,” he added in an emailed statement.