New York governor calls for China’s consul general expulsion after aide charged

Governor Kathy Hochul of New York said on Wednesday that she had called for the expulsion of China’s New York-based consul general, Huang Ping, after her former aide was criminally charged in a US court as an agent for Beijing.

“I have conveyed my desire to have the consul general from the People’s Republic of China and the New York mission expelled, and I’ve been informed that the consul general is no longer in the New York mission,” Hochul, the state’s top official, said.

The governor also said she had spoken with a “high-ranking State Department official” about the matter, at the request of US Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller in Washington denied that Huang had been expelled, instead characterising the official’s departure as “the end of a regular scheduled rotation”.

“That said,” Miller continued, “foreign interference, including attempts to influence through covert activities that should be registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act and are not registered, are things that we take seriously.”