China Denies Report it may Detain Americans

China has denied that foreign nationals are under threat of arbitrary detention, following a newspaper report that Beijing had warned Washington it might arrest Americans in China.
It was reported on Saturday by the Wall Street Journal that Chinese officials had issued repeated warnings to U.S. government officials that China may detain Americans in response to the Justice Department’s prosecution of Chinese scholars affiliated to the military.
The Chinese foreign ministry said it was Washington that was mistreating foreign citizens, accusing the United States of “outright political repression” of Chinese academics.
“The U.S. claim that foreign nationals in China are under threat of arbitrary detention is playing the victim and confusing black and white,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian told a regular news briefing. “China protects the safety and legitimate rights of foreigners”
The US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo warned against anyone supplying arms to the Islamic republic after Tehran said a longstanding UN embargo against such deals had expired.
China’s foreign ministry said Pompeo’s remarks were “utterly unjustifiable.”
“It is the US that peddles arms and ammunition everywhere, uses military trade to serve geopolitical interests, and even openly interferes in the internal affairs of other countries,” foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian told reporters.
Asked if China would now sell arms to Iran, Zhao did not directly address the issue but said Beijing would “handle military trade following its military export policy and its international obligations”.
The embargo on the sale of conventional arms to Iran was due to begin expiring progressively from October 18 under terms of the UN resolution that confirmed the 2015 nuclear deal between Tehran and world powers.
Tehran, which can now purchase weapons from Russia, China, and elsewhere, has hailed the expiration as a diplomatic victory over its arch-enemy the United States, which had tried to maintain an indefinite freeze on arms sales.
President Donald Trump withdrew the United States from the nuclear deal in 2018 and has unilaterally begun reimposing sanctions on Iran.
The Trump administration has increasingly accused China of using cyber operations and espionage to steal U.S. technological, military, and other know-how. Beijing denies this.