China vows to protest ‘every single incident’ of mistreatment of Chinese arrivals in US
- Chinese embassy accuses US border authorities of heavy-handedness, sending back hundreds of Chinese citizens since July 2021
- The renewed criticism comes a week after presidents Xi Jinping and Joe Biden agreed to take further steps to expand people-to-people exchanges
In a statement on Monday, the Chinese embassy in the United States accused the US of “unjustifiably” sending back nearly 300 Chinese citizens since July 2021, including more than 70 Chinese students that it said had legal and valid travel documents.
In one case, a visiting Chinese scholar was detained for 22 hours on arrival at San Francisco International Airport in February before having his visa cancelled. He was deported back to China and banned from entering the US for five years, the embassy said.
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Four US customs officers were said to have interrogated the scholar for 12 hours in the “secondary inspection” area where further interviews are conducted, questioning the traveller’s political background, research field, purpose for visiting the US and funding methods.
“Similar incidents have emerged, one after another with increasing frequency recently,” the embassy said, adding that even Chinese officials invited by the US for a friendly visit were not immune from being “harassed”.
“Such acts by the US side far exceeded the scope of normal law enforcement and are driven by strong ideological bias.”
The Chinese embassy and some consulates have formally protested to the US State Department, National Security Council, Homeland Security and Customs and Border Protection, according to the statement.
“The Chinese side has been ‘lodging representations on every single incident’ toward the final resolution of the issue,” it said.
