Closure of U.S. consulate in Chengdu draws local crowds and mockery

Last Friday, China ordered the U.S. to shut its consulate in Chengdu in response to the American closure of China’s equivalent branch in Houston. Since then, the ongoing tit-for-tat consulate closures between the two countries have sparked a slew of concerned responses from foreign affairs experts, who warned that the diplomatic conflict is likely to cause a significant deterioration in worsening relations between Beijing and Washington.

But the same sentiment is not shared by millions of people on the Chinese internet, who applauded China’s “unyielding stance on America’s aggression” and reacted to the news with elation and humor. In Chengdu, almost overnight, the shuttered U.S. consulate became an attraction, drawing throngs of people hungry to watch history in the making.

Judging by photos posted on Chinese social media, crowds of onlookers packed the streets outside the Chengdu consulate on Friday, standing shoulder to shoulder while wondering if smoke would come out of the location, as rumors swirled that workers at the consulate would burn classified documents before eviction.

Restaurants and snack shops near the consulate were swarmed by people who lingered around for the rest of the day.

Videos taken by spectators on the scene show a man setting off firecrackers in front of the consulate and being immediately taken away by police. Later, the police announced that the man had received an administrative penalty for violating Chinese regulations on the use of fireworks.

The firework incident didn’t dampen the excitement surrounding the closure. Over the weekend, hundreds of local residents visited the consulate. Plainclothes police officers were present to maintain order, but they did not disperse onlookers, who gathered and snapped selfies with the facility. Some visitors waved Chinese flags while being photographed.

But it appeared that acts that were more provocative than flag-waving were not allowed. Bloomberg reports that a man in the crowd attempted to “unfurl a banner” on Saturday, but he was swiftly dealt with by police.

Meanwhile, a string of Chinese news outlets have seized on this history-making moment to boost traffic and stir up nationalistic sentiments. On Friday, China Central Television (CCTV) hosted a seven-hour long livestream session showing real-time footage of the consulate online. Although there were no major activities to be seen, the broadcasting hit a peak viewership of 30 million viewers at one point. It even attracted a comment from the official Weibo account of the Communist Youth League of China (CYLC), the Chinese Communist Party’s division for young people, which wrote: “Feeling so almighty with the power of 5G. We can live stream everything.”

Online, the majority of internet users were delighted by the shutdown, saying that it was a necessary move on China’s part to show its determination to hold firm in the face of “malicious attacks” from the U.S. “Chinese people have become increasingly confident. If this happened in 1999, we would probably march in the streets to protest. But now we just sit here and watch the U.S. doing its petty tricks like a clown,” a Weibo user wrote. Commenting on how shops close to the consulate have experienced an uptick in business thanks to the crowds, a Weibo user wrote, “Americans must be so pissed. The closure even boosted our local economies.”

The shutdown also prompted a lot of humorous takes on the event. A popular joke on Weibo is that given the consulate’s prime location, the building it occupied should be transformed into a hotpot restaurant or a shopping mall. Some creative meme-makers even designed advertising posts for the building.