China’s zero-Covid policy is notorious for coercion and control of its citizens. But what isn’t known, and should be shocking, is how the U.S. government let China impose similar inhumane practices on U.S. diplomats.
Congressional sources have shared with us internal memos, emails and cables delivered to State Department senior officials over the past two years. They describe China’s mistreatment of foreign-service officers and their families assigned to the U.S. Embassy and consulates in China. Frustrated by State’s failure to stop the abuse, whistleblowers turned to Congress.
Nearly every U.S. diplomat arriving in China since fall 2020 was at risk, though not everyone was treated the same. Congressional aides say State has privately admitted that some 30 individuals were imprisoned for weeks in locked rooms and often squalid conditions. (State tells us it was only 16.) These people and other arriving diplomats have also been subject to multiple and unnecessary medical tests; forced to undergo months of quarantine and family separation; and they are monitored and controlled by China’s online “health” app.
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The U.S. evacuated some 1,300 diplomats and their families from China in early 2020 when Covid hit. Through that summer State refused to let authoritarian governments use Covid as an excuse to mistreat or monitor diplomats. A July 27, 2020 cable to its foreign missions explained that State would not allow travel to a country if a U.S. employee or family would be subject to testing by foreign officials or quarantined in a foreign-government-controlled facility. Diplomats could agree to 14 days of self-quarantine.
Yet China refused to budge on its demands, and in September 2020 State agreed to sign a “limited waiver of inviolability,” essentially rolling over to China’s testing and quarantine regime for U.S. diplomats. The waiver let China impose 14 days of quarantine and require three tests (one before departure, one on arrival at the airport, and one on day 13 of quarantine). Diplomats testing positive had to stay in a “hospital” until recovered.
The whistleblower documents say China has since violated the agreement while the U.S. did little in response. In a 97-page memo sent Jan. 7, 2022 to the acting chief of the China mission, diplomats say that upon arrival they were assigned to quarantine in one of two China-selected hotels, which they suspect are…
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