The US on Friday rejected Chinese accusations that political motives were behind a top Beijing space official not receiving a visa in time to attend the start of an international conference in Washington this week.
China National Space Administration Vice Chairman Wu Yanhua (吳艷華) was the only official absent from the International Astronautical Congress panel on Monday that included heads of space agencies from Germany, Russia, India, the US, France and Japan.
Wu was at the conference on Friday, its last day, after receiving a visa.
Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Hua Chunying (華春瑩) on Wednesday said the US was “weaponizing the visa issue, repeatedly disregarding its international responsibilities and obstructing normal international exchanges and cooperation.”
US Department of State spokesperson Morgan Ortagus pushed back, saying: “The United States rejects the Chinese Foreign Ministry’s unfounded and baseless characterization of US visa policies toward China.”
She added that discussing individual visa cases is prohibited by law.
“In all of our visa adjudications, we are committed to ensuring national security, while also facilitating legitimate travel,” she said.
The friction over visas is the latest dispute between Beijing and Washington, already locked in a bitter trade dispute. They have also long differed on Taiwan, issues of human rights and the disputed South China Sea.
The moderator of Monday’s panel said Wu’s absence was due to a scheduling conflict.
A conference spokeswoman confirmed that Wu arrived in the US to attend.
Hua said that China is an important participant in the congress and sends delegations every year.
China applied for the visas in July, and on Oct. 12 the delegation from the Chinese agency went for visa interviews at the US embassy.
However, the head of the delegation still did not have his visa as the congress began, Hua said.
Chinese diplomats in the US must give advance notice of any meetings with state, local and municipal officials, as well as at educational and research institutions, senior department officials said last week.
The officials told reporters that the move was an effort to “add reciprocity” to the way US diplomats are treated in China.
Local co-organizer Sandy Magnus told reporters that it was never the intention of the congress to “politicize” the registration process and that planning committees had reached out to China and Russia, another US rival, more than a year in advance to pre-empt visa granting issues.
“We had set up a process, and unfortunately the execution of that process was not ideal, for whatever reason. We got information from them kind of late,” Magnus, a former NASA astronaut, said of the Chinese delegation.
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