BEIJING • US officials who have engaged in "nasty behaviour" over Chinese-claimed Taiwan will face sanctions, China's Foreign Ministry has said, after Washington lifted curbs on exchanges between American and Taiwanese officials.
Sino-US ties have worsened as China has already condemned this month's easing, announced by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in the waning days of Mr Donald Trump's presidency.
Further adding to China's anger, the US ambassador to the United Nations, Ms Kelly Craft, spoke last week to Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen, after a planned trip to Taipei was called off.
Asked at a daily news briefing yesterday how China would follow through on its pledge to make the United States "pay a heavy price" for its engagements with Taiwan, ministry spokesman Hua Chunying said some US officials would face sanctions. "Owing to the wrong actions of the United States, China has decided to impose sanctions on responsible US officials who have engaged in nasty behaviour on the Taiwan issue," she said, without elaborating.
When asked about US sanctions on six mainland and Hong Kong officials announced last Friday over the mass arrests in Hong Kong, Ms Hua said China has decided to impose sanctions on American officials, members of the US Congress, personnel at non-governmental organisations and their family members over their "nasty behaviour" on the Hong Kong issue.
China said last month it would sanction American individuals as a reciprocal response to the US sanctions on over a dozen Chinese officials. It was unclear from Ms Hua's reply yesterday whether the Hong Kong-related sanctions were new.
Ms Hua also did not name the US officials being sanctioned and the nature of the sanctions.
China's Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office yesterday likened Mr Pompeo to a "praying mantis" in a colourful condemnation of the sanctions on the six officials.
"People like Pompeo are nothing but laughable praying mantises who are trying in vain to stop the rolling wheels of history."
The metaphor stems from an old Chinese idiom that describes futility in which a mantis tries to stop a chariot with its legs. Dismissing US sanctions as "a political trick when all other tricks are exhausted", the office urged Mr Pompeo to "wind up the show" - a reference to his impending departure from office.
Democrat Joe Biden will be sworn in as president tomorrow, and a new team will take over at the State Department.
REUTERS, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
