Trump admin fires diplomat over romance with Chinese national

A foreign service officer lost his job Wednesday after acknowledging he concealed a romantic relationship with a Chinese woman alleged to have Communist Party connections, marking the first known firing for violating a ban on such relationships enacted in January 2025.

What happened: State Department spokesman Tommy Pigott confirmed the termination but declined to name the officer, who appeared in undercover video footage published by conservative activist James O’Keefe. In the recording, made by an undercover journalist he met on a dating app, the diplomat described a six-week romance in 2024 with a Chinese national whose father held Communist Party membership. “I defied my government for love,” he told the journalist while acknowledging his girlfriend “could have been a spy” and calling her father “straight up Communist Party.” U.S. officials later confirmed the woman’s father was a Chinese Communist Party official.

Both President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio authorized the dismissal after reviewing the matter. “We will maintain a zero-tolerance policy for any employee who is caught undermining our country’s national security,” Pigott said in his statement. The case also marks the first known instance of discipline under a separate Trump executive order signed in February that calls for Foreign Service “reform” to ensure “faithful and effective implementation” of his foreign policy objectives.

The risk of being Chinese: The termination highlights expanding restrictions specifically targeting Chinese nationals in the personal lives of U.S. government workers. Back in former President Joe Biden’s final days in office, the State Department banned American government personnel stationed in China, along with contractors holding security clearances and their relatives, from engaging in romantic or sexual relationships with Chinese citizens. This nationality-specific ban stands alone among U.S. policies toward foreign populations, treating all Chinese individuals as potential security risks regardless of personal background.

Unlike case-by-case security reviews, the blanket policy means even transparent, disclosed relationships could end careers. Officials pointed to the policy as a response to Chinese intelligence tactics, particularly “honeypot” operations where agents cultivate romantic connections with targeted officials. The diplomat’s firing has intensified scrutiny of such concerns. Responding to the firing in Beijing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun declined to comment directly but stated, “We oppose drawing lines based on ideological difference and maliciously smearing China.”

The big picture: The dismissal comes amid conflicting administration policies toward Chinese nationals. Rubio declared in May the government would “aggressively revoke” student visas for Chinese nationals “with connections to the Chinese Communist Party.” By late August, Trump reversed course, proposing to admit 600,000 Chinese students to American universities, more than double the approximately 277,000 currently studying in the U.S. The contradictory approaches of encouraging student enrollment for institutional benefit while banning personal relationships frame Chinese individuals as economically valuable but personally untrustworthy.

The inconsistency has produced real consequences. Multiple Chinese students with proper documentation face extended detention and removal. One 22-year-old philosophy graduate student with full scholarship funding spent 36 hours in custody before deportation in August, interrogated primarily about his parents’ party affiliation despite never joining himself, and received a five-year entry ban. Simultaneously, the administration moved in August to limit Chinese journalist visas to 90-day periods as part of wider visa policy reviews affecting millions. Policy experts caution that such ethnicity-focused measures risk deterring qualified Asian Americans from foreign policy careers, especially positions requiring regional expertise.