[ad_1]
STATE DEPARTMENT: A senior US official behind the Trump administration’s China policies is communicating directly with the Chinese people to pressure US concerns about China’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Deputy US National Security Advisor USA Matt Pottinger, speaking in Mandarin Chinese on Monday, said China’s ruling Communist Party risks a popular reaction if Beijing does not ease controls on freedom of expression.
“When governments remove small acts of bravery, great acts of bravery follow,” Pottinger said during a webinar organized by the University of Virginia Miller Center.
The warning came one day when China hit 101S t anniversary of the May 4 Movement, a cultural and political protest movement that propelled China towards modernity.
Since the coronavirus outbreak in China, authorities have cracked down on critics who noted deficiencies in the government’s response. Chinese doctors, including coronavirus complainant Dr. Li Wenliang, who sounded the first alarms before succumbing to the virus, were punished. Others, including citizen journalists such as Chen Qiushi, Fang Bin and Li Zehua, who denounced the authorities’ mismanagement of the crisis, disappeared.
“When a privileged few become too remote and interested, populism is what drives them backward or throws them overboard. It has a kinetic energy. It fueled the 2015 Brexit vote and the election of President Trump in 2016, “added Pottinger.
Pottinger, a former Navy officer and Wall Street Journal reporter who reported from China for several years, is among the top American officials who have been publicly making distinctions between China’s ruling Communist Party and the Chinese people.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, a regular critic of the Beijing government, has congratulated the Chinese people for being “smart” and “hardworking,” while belittling Beijing’s treatment of its citizens.
The White House message came shortly after a Beijing news report said an internal communist party document warns of growing global hostility over the coronavirus outbreak.
Reuters, which reported the warning recently issued to top Chinese leaders, concluded that global sentiment against China is at its highest point since the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown and could lead Beijing to Washington relations into confrontation. .
The relations between the EE. USA And China has deteriorated significantly since the coronavirus outbreak that has killed some 250,000 people worldwide.
In recent weeks, the two countries have sharpened their accusations about managing the pandemic. The United States said China hid the severity of the outbreak and did not allow American researchers to study the virus from the beginning. China insists that it has been transparent and has worked with the World Health Organization to prepare countries for the next health disaster.
Mistrust between the world’s two main economies also grows from what Washington said was Beijing’s unfair trade and technology practices to disputes over Hong Kong, Taiwan and the disputed territories in the South China Sea.
