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24 July 2020New chapter in the increasingly muscular confrontation between Washington and Beijing. The US Justice Department charged four Chinese researchers accused of lying about their ties to the People's Liberation Army and the Chinese Communist Party. Three of them were arrested, one took refuge in the Chinese consulate in San Francisco. 

According to the State Department, they were part of a plot organized by Beijing to infiltrate U.S. institutions and steal scientific and technological information. Three of the four indicted researchers worked in the medical field at California universities. The fourth was specializing in artificial intelligence at Indiana University. 

Beijing called the move "pure political persecution". The US government "harassed and even arbitrarily stopped Chinese students and researchers in the US with the presumption of guilt," attacked the Beijing Foreign Ministry, announcing "measures to safeguard citizens' security and their legitimate rights." 

His American counterpart, Mike Pompeo, did not hold back in the war of statements. Speaking in California, he made an appeal "to the free world" to triumph against "the new tyranny" embodied by the People's Republic of China. "If the free world doesn't change communist China, communist China will change us," said Pompeo using unprecedented tones. 

The intervention follows the closure of the Chinese consulate in Houston, described as a den of spies to obtain mainly industrial secrets. "Today's China is increasingly authoritarian in the interior of the country, and more aggressive in its hostility towards freedom elsewhere," said Pompeo. Pompeo then called Xi Jinping "adept of a totalitarian ideology".

Pending the Chinese reaction to Pompeo's words, the announcement made by London to grant citizenship to Hong Kong residents holding a British passport arrived. According to the Financial Times, Wang Wenbin, a spokesman for the Beijing Foreign Ministry, has threatened to no longer recognize as valid those passports that had been guaranteed to Hong Kong citizens born before the ex-colony's move to China in 1997 It is about 3 million people.