US Ambassador to China Terry Branstad has tendered his resignation, US Foreign Minister Mike Pompeo announced on Twitter on Monday (September 14th).
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The reasons for his departure have not been specified for the moment.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry, while acknowledging receipt of Pompeo's tweet, said it had not been informed of this resignation.
Thanking Mr. Branstad for his services, the US Secretary of State said in a tweet that he had "
helped rebalance relations between the United States and China so that they are more based on results, bilateral and fair
”.
Mr. Branstad, 73, was governor of Iowa, a state in the American Midwest, twice, from 1983 to 1999, then from 2011 to 2017. He had been in Beijing since 2017, representing Washington there for a period. tensions with China over trade, local land claims, the pandemic and unrest in Hong Kong.
In June, he was summoned by Beijing after the signing by US President Donald Trump of a law authorizing sanctions against the Hong Kong leaders, an action that the Chinese Foreign Ministry had described as "
gross interference in Chinese internal affairs.
".
Last year, he called on China to open a “
real dialogue
” with the Dalai Lama during a rare visit by an American official to Tibet, where the Chinese government is accused of carrying out a large-scale repression.
An early supporter of Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election, he was appointed shortly after the latter's election.
At the time, Mr. Trump's entourage praised his "
great understanding of China and the Chinese
".
He had notably met the current Chinese President Xi Jinping in the 1980s.
