Talk:Consulate General of China, Houston

Old redirects for discussion

See also Wikipedia:Redirects_for_discussion/Log/2016_June_1#Consulate-General_of_China_in_Houston

Because of the 2020 closure this topic is now notable. WhisperToMe (talk) 23:25, 22 July 2020 (UTC)

Did you know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by The Squirrel Conspiracy (talk) 20:33, 17 August 2020 (UTC)

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• Comment or view
• Article history

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Chinese Consulate-General in Houston, Texas

• ... that the Chinese Consulate-General in Houston (pictured) was the People's Republic of China's first consulate-general in the United States? "China’s foreign ministry condemned the closure of its oldest consulate in the US, which has been in existence since the two countries normalised diplomatic ties in 1979."
  • ALT1:... that in July 2020, the Chinese Consulate-General in Houston (pictured) was given just 72 hours to close down? "The United States gave China 72 hours to close its consulate in Houston amid accusations of spying"
  • Reviewed: Potato production in Algeria
  • Comment: Failed ITN so here we are.

Created/expanded by Juxlos (talk). Self-nominated at 00:57, 23 July 2020 (UTC).

• Comment: I think the first hook is better than the alternative. It conveys interesting information even to people who are already aware of the recent news events. —Granger (talk · contribs) 15:18, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

General: Article is new enough and long enough
New enough: Long enough:

Policy compliance:

• Adequate sourcing: - n: the list of consuls is not sourced anywhere I can see, and makes up a noticeable part of the article.
• Neutral: - n: The US's reasoning for closing the consulate is not cited to any third party source, just to a direct US quote, and the US is very much involved here. We want a third party source. In fact, the US reasoning is not even explained very well by the quote, see below.
• Free of copyright violations, plagiarism, and close paraphrasing:

Hook: Hook has been verified by provided inline citation
Cited: Interesting:

Image: Image is freely licensed, used in the article, and clear at 100px.
Freely licensed: Used in article: Clear at 100px:

QPQ: Done.

Overall: Sorry for causing so many problems for such a small article, especially one you brought back from the dead! I think you can fix it, though. Besides the above:

1. please provide a well cited explanation of why the US closed the consulate, especially since this is such a big part of the article. Did they specifically accuse the consulate of spying or helping spying? How, when, why, where? Was this a reaction to some other alleged spying by China not connected with the consulate specifically? Again, we need a good source that says this. Was this a general part of the Trump-China trade war, and the spying was just an excuse? Then we need a good source that explains this, not just a US statement. If it is not clear, and it is a mystery what happened here, we should say that, again well cited. As it is, I, at least, am left confused by why the consulate was closed.

• Unfortunately I don't think either China, the US, or a really well-connected investigative journalist will be releasing detailed dossiers of Chinese intelligence operations from the Houston consulate soon, so all we have are public statements. Juxlos (talk) 03:41, 16 August 2020 (UTC)

2. from this, you can probably tell that I disagree with User:Mx. Granger's comment, and think the second hook is more interesting. For any given country, there has to be a first consulate in the US, that means there are what, 200+ of them? That's not particularly novel. Having a consulate being forced to close down at short notice is (hopefully!) rarer. In fact, would you consider a hook that combines the two, that mentions that it was the first consulate and had to be closed within 72 hours?

• Then maybe ALT2: ... that in July 2020 the Chinese Consulate-General in Houston (pictured), the People's Republic of China's first consulate in the United States, was given just 72 hours to close down? Juxlos (talk) 03:41, 16 August 2020 (UTC)

3. please consider re-including the content about Li Cunxin that was there before the article was deleted. The article wasn't deleted because it wasn't interesting content, it was deleted because there wasn't enough about the consulate itself. You now have enough about the consulate itself, we can support a couple of sentences about an interesting incident in its history, and we can restore the content written by the original article creator. By the way Thank you for restoring a deleted article, and making it interesting, that's really cool.

• Added this one. Juxlos (talk) 03:41, 16 August 2020 (UTC)

Thanks! But for #1, I think you're misreading my request. I don't expect you to "find out the truth", I know that's going to be impossible, I just want some reliable third party sources explaining in more detail: was (A) the allegation against this consulate specifically, (B) Chinese consulates in general, or (C) just a ploy in the trade war? The quotes you selected both don't do that, and are primary sources. After you responded I decided to find out whether such reliable third party sources even exist and they sure do:

• https://www.foxnews.com/politics/us-raid-chinese-consulate-houston-spy-hub "The U.S. alleged that the consulate was a nest of Chinese spies who tried to steal data from facilities in Texas, including the Texas A&M medical system and The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston." This seems to say option A, this specific consulates was part of specific incidents.
• https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/24/politics/us-agents-houston-chinese-consulate/index.html "The Chinese Consulate General in Houston has closed following Tuesday's order to do so after US officials alleged it was part of a larger Chinese espionage effort using diplomatic facilities around the US, a State Department spokesperson confirmed to CNN late Friday." This seems to say option B, Chinese consulates in general (though a bit later also mentions specifically this consulate)
• https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/chinese-consulate-houston-was-hotspot-spying-say-u-s-officials-n1234634 "Multiple U.S. officials said that the Houston consulate has long been used by the Chinese government to steal valuable medical research and that it was involved in attempts to infiltrate the oil and natural gas industries." Again option A.
• https://theintercept.com/2020/07/26/chinese-consulate-houston-texas/ "People close to China-related investigations in Houston say the decision to close the consulate may be more about politics than spy threats." This seems to say option C.

I am sure there are even other sources, and there is probably more detail in even these four articles, but these are just the first few that I found in under 5 minutes and I haven't really read them in depth, but please do pick one or more of these and use them as sources, because just a few quotes from the sides without third parties putting them in context don't really explain the issue, and don't really meet our standards for WP:RS and WP:NPOV. --GRuban (talk) 11:05, 16 August 2020 (UTC)

I've updated with some sources, but I'm refraining from explaining it too much at this point as a lot of information I could find are generally quoted to "former intelligence officials" et al. Juxlos (talk) 12:03, 16 August 2020 (UTC)

, for ALT2. Thank you! --GRuban (talk) 12:12, 16 August 2020 (UTC) GRuban (talk) 02:10, 16 August 2020 (UTC)

@GRuban: addressed some concerns and issues. Juxlos (talk) 03:42, 16 August 2020 (UTC)

List of consuls general

Found in Chinese: http://houston.china-consulate.org/chn/zlsxx/2323423/ WhisperToMe (talk) 00:57, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

Former office

For a period it had a temporary office at 3400 Montrose http://web.archive.org/web/20040219082625/http://houston.china-consulate.org/eng/sgxw/t57183.htm WhisperToMe (talk) 01:53, 26 July 2020 (UTC)