As the United States had ordered the closure of China’s Houston consulate on Tuesday, Beijing in retaliation on Friday, ordered the closure of the American consulate in the southwestern city of Chengdu.

The Chinese foreign ministry said in a statement, the move was a “legitimate and necessary response to the unreasonable measures by the United States”.

“The current situation in China-US relations is not what China desires to see, and the US is responsible for all this,” the statement added.

While the US has an embassy in Beijing as well as five consulates in mainland China and one in Hong Kong, the Chengdu consulate was established in 1985 and has around 200 staff with approximately 150 locally hired Chinese employees, according to its website. It has been the site of diplomatic drama in past years.

Between the world’s two biggest economies tensions have soared on multiple fronts , deteriorating further after Washington ordered the closure of the Houston consulate on Tuesday within 72 hours.

The US cited Chinese theft of intellectual property for the closure, which came a day after the Justice Department unveiled the indictment of two Chinese nationals for allegedly hacking hundreds of companies and attempting to steal Coronavirus vaccine research.

China had threatened to retaliate against the consulate closure if the US did not withdraw its decision.

Beijing has urged the US again to backtrack and “create the necessary conditions for bilateral relations to return to normal”, in its statement on Friday.

Earlier, in 2013, China demanded the US provide an explanation for a spying programme after news reports said a top-secret map leaked by fugitive intelligence analyst Edward Snowden showed US surveillance facilities at embassies and consulates worldwide — with the Chengdu consulate among them.

The Chengdu mission was also where senior Chinese official Wang Lijun fled in 2012 from his powerful boss Bo Xilai who was then head of the nearby metropolis Chongqing.

Meanwhile, recently, Washington and Beijing have been at loggerheads over a range of issues, including Coronavirus pandemic, trade and China’s policies on Hong Kong, Xinjiang and the South China Sea.

Republican Senator Marco Rubio earlier called China’s Houston consulate the “central node of the Communist Party’s vast network of spies and influence operations in the United States”.

Michael McCaul, Republican Leader on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said the consulate was the “epicentre” of Chinese efforts to steal “sensitive information to build up their military”.

(With AFP inputs)