The US has issued a travel warning to its citizens to “reconsider” travel to mainland China due to police “arbitrariness” and the resulting risk of arrest.
The Chinese government “arbitrarily applies laws and issues deportation orders against citizens of the US and other countries without due and transparent process,” said the State Department’s text, published on the portal of The Hill newspaper.
Thus, there is a “risk of wrongful detention of citizens” of the US, so residents of the Asian country or those for this trip “may be detained without access to consular services[VS]or information about the crime of which they are accused”, and continue to be “the subject of interrogations and detention without fair and transparent treatment, in accordance with the law”.
The alert also added that Chinese authorities consider state secrets to be “a wide variety of documents”, which would lead to the opening of an espionage investigation. US citizens may also be detained or deported for sending private messages critical of Chinese, Hong Kong or Macao authorities.
On the other hand, Washington warned against using “travel bans” to “force individuals to participate in official investigations, pressure family members to return to China, settle civil disputes in favor of Chinese citizens, or obtain anything to negotiate with foreigners from the government”. .
The message also warns not to use drugs before or during the trip to China, not to participate in demonstrations, protests or “any other activity that the authorities may interpret as supporting secession, subversion, terrorism or cooperation with a foreign country.” .
The message was published a few days after the visit to Beijing by the Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, to ease tensions between the two countries.
Relations between China and the US have deteriorated in recent months, derailing first in August last year, with the visit to Taiwan of then US Congressional Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and in February this year, with the shot-down by the US military of a possible Chinese spy balloon, but which Beijing said was a meteorological probe.
During his visit, Blinken assured that the US does not support Taiwan independence and reiterated Washington’s support for the “one China” principle, though he considered China’s actions in the Taiwan Strait and East China Sea.
Source: DN
