Owen Churchill for the South China Morning Post. Read the article here.
When the Reciprocal Access to Tibet Act became law 13 months ago, it held the Trump administration to a stringent commitment: block any Chinese official who was involved in restricting foreign diplomats’ access to Tibet from stepping foot on American soil.
The administration was also required – one year after the bill’s enactment on December 19, 2018 – to provide the US Congress with a report that included a list of the individuals barred from entering the US or stripped of their visas.
Roughly a month since that deadline came and went, though, lawmakers are still waiting for the report, according to three congressional sources. And bipartisan frustration in both the House of Representatives and the Senate is growing.
In light of what one House aide described as the Trump administration’s “extremely lax” approach to the “letter of the law”, pressure from Congress on the US State Department to produce the Tibet report is happening “on a bicameral and bipartisan basis”.
Beijing claims that the Tibetan autonomous region is open to all foreigners, but the US disputes that.
A State Department report last March found that the Chinese government “systematically impeded travel” for US diplomats, journalists and tourists in 2018, denying five of nine official travel applications from the US diplomatic mission in China – including a request by US Ambassador Terry Branstad.