Is the New US Embassy in China a Trap?
The US has built a massive new embassy in China. According to the MSNBC article this picture is from, President Bush will cut the ribbon to open this $434 million, 500,000 square foot compound on the opening day of the Olympics.
Similarly, China is opening a 250,000 square foot compound in DC, the largest foreign embassy in the US capitol. See the full article here.
This is mostly tongue-in-cheek, but isn’t anyone scared of what might go on behind closed doors of the embassies of the most powerful countries in the world?
American criticizers of the US government in China, beware.
What do you think?
I am excited that we will have a large embassy. Not that I know if it will anything more than the other embassy did. I know that we go around and around with the chinese government on issues but that they continually break those deals or say they are dealing with it when you see the PSB stopping to buy fake DVDs on his way home from work. Seems that he should be arresting the person instead of buying from him
so many things. Also over 400 million it just amazes me what our taxes go for. When I see that the people in our city in the diplomatic service are able for free (to them) import an Excursion SUV. it cost me over 30k to import are car(another story about corruption)
Travis – wow, that’s a big import allowance. It does seem like a lot of money to be spending on an embassy. Wonder if there is some huge underground complex
That is one HUGE Embassy. As a conservative guess, it would accommodate easily 2,000 employees. All those people just to process visa applications and provide “assistance” for Americans in China ?
I’d suggest most employees would not carry man-bags, but would be flag-waving Stars’n'Stripes forever highly vetted types.
Jamieson – it’s the embassy of an empire.
I’m guessing that some of the employees will have purposes other than helping out fellow Americans, but that’s just a paranoid guess.
What ever made you guys think that the primary job of embassies is to do visa processing and provide assistance to americans?
These jobs are rather minor mandates for embassies, in fact there are entire embassies in certain countries that dont do ANY visa processing or provide assistance to american tourists/expats.
So yes alot of the people working in embassies aren’t the “man-bag” (I assume this is a term for civial servant) type but rather government employees who specialize in any number of different fields be they technological, translation, intelligence or diplomatic.
The last thing embassies want to do is help Americans abroad. It’s merely a myth, unfortunately.