Move FM Global News

CHENGDU, China – Thirty-five years after Vice President George H. W. Bush opened the U.S. consulate in Chengdu in China’s southwestern Sichuan province, the Chinese government has ordered its closure.

The demand came on Friday, apparently in retaliation for an order by the U.S. on Wednesday for China to close its consulate in Houston, Texas.

“The U.S. move seriously breached international law, the basic norms of international relations, and the terms of the China-U.S. Consular Convention. It gravely harmed China-U.S. relations,” China’s foreign ministry said in a statement on Friday.

“The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China informed the U.S. Embassy in China of its decision to withdraw its consent for the establishment and operation of the U.S. Consulate General in Chengdu,” it said.

The United States consulate general at Chengdu, on the first floor of the west wing of the Jinjiang Hotel, was officially opened by then-Vice President George H. W. Bush on October 16, 1985. Eight years later the consulate general mission was relocated from the hotel to No. 4 Lingshiguan Road, just south of the Chengdu city center, where it remains today.

The Chengdu consular district is made up of the Provinces of Sichuan, Yunnan, and Guizhou, and includes the Tibet Autonomous Region and Chongqing City Municipality.

The U.S. consulate normally operates with a staff of nearly 200, which includes around 150 professional Chinese nationals. The staff has been reduced during the recent pandemic months with many of the U.S. nationals having returned home.

The current U.S. Consul General is Jim Mullinax who took up the post in August 2017. He previously served as Economic Counselor at the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta. He has spent most of his career in Asia, having been posted in the past to Manila in the Philippines; Surabaya in Indonesia; The Taiwan capital of Taipei; Hong Kong; and Shanghai.

In Washington, Mullinax served as the Acting Director of the East Asia and Pacific Economic Policy Office where, in addition to preparing senior officials for APEC and ASEAN ministerial meetings, he led initiatives to promote senior level commercial advocacy at multilateral meetings and to encourage foreign investment in the United States. He also worked in the Economic Bureau’s Office of Monetary Affairs, where he was responsible for macroeconomic analysis and U.S. policy on debt relief and restructuring for African and Eastern European nations.

Mullinax is a graduate of the University of Puget Sound, and holds an MA from Ohio University and an MPA from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He speaks Mandarin Chinese and Indonesian. He is married to well-known food writer Tzu-I Chuang Mullinax and they have two sons.