UPDATE: Chinese Consulate says envoy was not removed after Hochul remark
China’s consul general New York in the U.S. left his post as scheduled after completing his posting last month, the State Department said on Wednesday, hours after New York’s governor said she asked for his expulsion in the aftermath of an aide’s arrest for secretly acting as a Chinese agent.
U.S. State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller told reporters that Consul General Huang Ping “was not expelled.”
“Our understanding is that the consul general reached the end of a regular scheduled rotation in August, and so rotated out of the position, but was not expelled,” Miller said.
“But of course, when it comes to the status of particular employees of a foreign mission, I would refer you to the foreign country to speak to it. But there was no expulsion action.”
China’s embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Huang Ping’s status.
Earlier on Wednesday, New York Governor Kathy Hochul told an event that she spoke by phone at the request of Secretary of State Antony Blinken to a high-ranking State Department official “and I had conveyed my desire to have the consul general from the People’s Republic of China in the New York mission expelled.”
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