During the three-year mask period, the United States closed its consulate in Chengdu in July 2020. Recently, the Netherlands** decided to close the Dutch consulate in Chongqing, an important city in southwest China.
The Dutch Embassy in China confirmed the news on Monday (March 4) with a WeChat message: The Consulate General of the Netherlands in Chongqing was officially closed last Friday (March 1), and the Dutch Embassy in Beijing will cover Chongqing, Sichuan, Shaanxi, Yunnan and Guizhou from now on.
Bloomberg, citing people familiar with the matter, said that Dutch representatives said at a meeting of foreign businessmen in Chengdu on Friday that the Netherlands decided to close its consulate in Chongqing because of limited business activities in Chongqing.
China told Bloomberg that every country has the right to decide whether to set up or close offices abroad, and China respects the decision made by the Netherlands.
In an interview with Lianhe Zaobao, the staff of the consulate general of a Western country in Chongqing revealed that the news of the closure of the consulate general of the Netherlands was "very sudden", and the representative of the embassy in China recently suddenly visited Chongqing and notified the decision to close the consulate, which surprised the consulate staff and caught them off guard.
The consulate staff pointed out that foreign direct investment in Chongqing has continued to decline in recent years, and has not yet recovered to the pre-epidemic level of more than US$10 billion per year. In recent years, Western countries have continued to close their consulates in southwest China, which is related to factors such as weak economic and trade and huge costs for opening consulates, but "it may be more due to the overall tension between countries in the world." 
*: Dutch Prime Minister Wopke Hoekstra reported that data from early February this year showed that the growth rate of foreign direct investment in China in 2023 fell to a new low since 1993.
China and the Netherlands have close economic and trade relations, and the Netherlands was once China's second largest partner in the EU.
In recent years, the United States has frequently introduced policies to restrict the shipment of high-tech products to China, including the export of advanced semiconductor chip technology and equipment to China, after the Netherlands chose to cooperate with the United States, and also tightened the control of advanced lithography machines exported to China. The Dutch company ASML, the world's leading manufacturer of advanced semiconductor lithography machines, has stopped shipping advanced lithography equipment to China** after receiving a ban from the Netherlands**.
Chongqing is the center and hub of political and economic development in southwest China. But there are not many countries that have opened consulates in Chongqing. Following the closure of the Netherlands consulate in Chongqing, countries that currently retain consulates in Chongqing include Japan, Canada, and Hungary.
The United States once opened a consulate general in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan Province, not far from Chongqing. But after Trump asked China to close its consulate in Houston in 2020, Beijing also ordered the closure of its consulate general in Chengdu.