FEER Article: Chinese Diplomats in Texas Round-Up

Sometimes eager-to-please underlings try too hard. That's what Chinese President Jiang Zemin may be thinking about some diplomats in China's embassy in Washington. Jiang hopes to swing an invitation to President George W. Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas, in October, when he visits the United States for the last time as China's head of state. He's expected to step down as Communist Party General Secretary in September and as state president in March 2003. According to a diplomat in Beijing and a senior administration official in Washington, Chinese diplomats in Washington recently decided they ought to take a trip to Crawford to size up the ranch well ahead of Jiang's possible visit.

In the wake of the September 11 attacks, however, casing the U. S. President’s home away from the White House is a little harder than the Chinese diplomats appear to have anticipated. In Crawford, somewhere in the vicinity of the ranch, the diplomats were picked up by the U. S. Secret Service. Officers questioned them, examined their diplomatic identification papers, told them that they should have gone through formal channels--in this case the State Department--to arrange the trip, and put the chastened diplomats on a flight back to Washington. Asked for comment, the State Department referred the REVIEW to the Secret Service, where officials declined to return phone calls.

Source:
Far Eastern Economic Review
http://www. feer. com/articles/2002/0204_18/p028china. html