The closure of the Chinese consulate in Houston is the latest salvo in a battle between the United States and China for economic and technological supremacy that is shaping up as a new Cold War and includes a high-stakes race for a COVID-19 vaccine.

- The latest developments -

The United States ordered the closure of the Chinese consulate in the Texas city of Houston on Wednesday, citing Chinese theft of intellectual property.

The move came a day after the Justice Department unveiled the indictment of two Chinese nationals for hacking hundreds of companies and attempting to steal coronavirus vaccine research.

Republican Senator Marco Rubio, acting chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, tweeted that the Houston consulate was the "central node of the Communist Party's vast network of spies & influence operations in the United States."

Houston is one of the largest centers for biotech and medical research in the world.

Foreign policy experts said reprisals can be expected.

"The cardinal rule of diplomacy is reciprocity," said Molly Montgomery, a former diplomat now at the Brookings Institution.

"State doesn't make a decision like this lightly, since it almost certainly will result in the closure of one of our own consulates."

- What are the US grievances? -

The accusations of Chinese economic espionage appear to be the primary motivation for the US move but it comes against a backdrop of disputes with Beijing on numerous fronts.

"There is no doubt that China represents a tremendous espionage threat for the United States," said Abraham Denmark, Asia program director with the Kissinger Institute on China and the US at The Wilson Center.

"The question here is not China's culpability -- I expect it's solid -- but rather if suddenly closing the consulate in Houston will address the problem," Denmark said.

US accusations that China is engaged in a campaign to steal American corporate secrets are not new.

But President Donald Trump has made it a theme of his trade war with China and made turning up the pressure on Beijing a pillar of his 2016 presidential campaign.

Besides trade, US-China relations have also been soured by the COVID-19 pandemic, China's policies in Hong Kong and against the Uighurs in Xinjiang and in the South China Sea.

FBI director Christopher Wray said earlier this month that cases of Chinese economic espionage have soared by 1,300 percent over the past decade.

"We've now reached the point where the FBI is opening a new China-related counterintelligence case about every 10 hours," Wray said.

- What are the targets? -

US Attorney General Bill Barr recently accused China of mounting an "economic blitzkrieg" on global free markets and told US companies to stop compromising their principles to appease Chinese leaders and regulators.

"If Disney and other American corporations continue to bow to Beijing, they risk undermining both their own future competitiveness and prosperity, as well as the classical liberal order that has allowed them to thrive," Barr said.

The coronavirus pandemic has exacerbated tensions between Washington and Beijing with Trump repeatedly lashing out at China for not stopping what he calls the "Chinese virus."

Since May, the United States has accused China of seeking to steal coronavirus vaccine research, an allegation also levelled against the two Chinese hackers named in Tuesday's indictment.

- Why now? -

Barr warned not only of a Chinese "economic blitzkrieg" but an attempt by Beijing to "surpass the United States as the world's preeminent superpower."

Some 100 days from the November presidential election, Trump has sought to make US relations with China a central theme of his campaign, accusing his rival, former vice president Joe Biden, of being "soft" on China.

Speaking at a Senate hearing on China, Deputy Secretary of State Stephen Biegun said the United States was facing a "significant challenge in China."

"The one thing that I don't think any of us should expect are fast results," Biegun said. "We're up against a generational challenge here.

"This is a formidable challenge in virtually every dimension of our economic, political, and social and military existence."

Gerard Araud, the former French ambassador to the United States, said the Trump administration was seeking to frame the conflict in ideological terms.

"Most of the time, the US administration is not referring anymore to China but to the (Chinese Communist Party)," Araud said on Twitter. "A crude way to transform a great power rivalry into an ideological crusade."

A plethora of US-China disputes
Paris (AFP) July 22, 2020 - The United States and China are at loggerheads over a long list of issues, from the cause of the novel coronavirus to Hong Kong, and trade.

An overview, after Washington ordered the closure of the Chinese consulate in Houston within 72 hours, accusing it of being a centre for spies.

- Coronavirus -

Washington and Beijing have been engaged in a war of words over who is to blame for the novel coronavirus, since Trump described it as a "Chinese" virus in March.

China's Foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian retorted by suggesting that the US army might have brought the epidemic to Wuhan, the central Chinese city where it first emerged late last year.

The two superpowers then cracked down on each other's news outlets.

In May the foreign ministry pointed to American errors in the handling of the pandemic, while Trump fired back it was "incompetence of China and nothing else, that did this mass Worldwide killing."

- Vaccine hacking -

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in May warned healthcare and scientific researchers that Chinese-backed hackers were attempting to steal research and intellectual property related to treatments and vaccines for COVID-19.

On July 21, two Chinese nationals were indicted in the US for allegedly hacking hundreds of companies worldwide.

- Hong Kong -

Washington reacted to China's imposition of a sweeping new national security law on Hong Kong by ending preferential trade treatment for the former British colony.

It also restricted visas for Chinese officials seen as infringing on the city's autonomy and stopped the export of sensitive technologies.

China pressed ahead with the law in late June.

- Uighurs -

The United States earlier in July froze the assets and imposed visa bans on several officials from China's northwestern region of Xinjiang over rights abuses of its Turkic speaking minority.

It accused the group of "horrific and systematic abuses" in Xinjiang including forced labour, mass detention and involuntary population control.

It then put 11 Chinese companies suspected of taking part in the persecution on a black list, limiting their access to American technologies and products.

Washington says more than one million ethnic Uighurs and other Turkic-speaking minorities have been rounded up into a network of internment camps.

China contends that the facilities are vocational education centres.

- Trade war -

Weary of its hefty trade deficit with China, Washington declared a trade war in March 2018. It quickly escalated with tit-for-tat punitive duties on hundreds of billions of dollars of bilateral trade.

After truces and resumptions of hostilities, the two superpowers in January 2020 signed an initial accord under which China agreed to buy an extra $200 billion of US imports over two years.

But earlier this month Trump said he does not plan to proceed to the second phase of the accord, as relations with China have been seriously damaged.

- Huawei -

The US has accused Chinese telecoms giant Huawei of spying for Beijing and of rights abuses by allowing the Chinese regime to carry out surveillance of dissidents. It is also accused of installing large scale surveillance technologies in Xinjiang and non respect of the embargo on Iran.

Trump's administration has stepped up sanctions against the worldwide leader in 5G and has pressured allies, such as Britain, to shun the group.

- South China Sea -

On July 2, the US Defense Department criticised Chinese military exercises around the Paracel Islands in the South China Sea, in an area also claimed by Taiwan and Vietnam.

Two days later, the Pentagon said two of its own aircraft carriers had carried out drills in the South China Sea to "support a free and open Indo-Pacific".

- Nuclear talks -

In early July Beijing rejected a new US invitation to join arms control talks with Russia.

Trump's administration has demanded that China take part in talks on a successor to the New START treaty, which caps the nuclear warheads of the United States and Russia -- the two Cold War-era superpowers.

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