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Chinese state media unleashed a torrent of criticism against Secretary of State Michael Pompeo, calling him “evil” and a liar, as Beijing tried to dismiss accusations of the US virus without sparking a confrontation with President Donald J. Trump.
State media released a series of comments that attacked Pompeo after he said there was “enormous evidence” that the coronavirus outbreak emerged from a high-security virology laboratory in the Chinese city of Wuhan. The official Xinhua News Agency said the top US diplomat was speaking “nonsense,” while a newscaster for China Central Television read a comment accusing him of “spitting poison.”
“United States Secretary of State Pompeo picked up his own lies in a May 3 media interview,” news anchor Li Zimeng said. “If the deceptive behaviors of evil politicians like Pompeo continue, America’s” Make America Great Again “could simply become a joke.”
While the coverage included some of China’s harshest criticism of a Trump administration official since the height of the trade war last year, state media continued to avoid direct attacks on Trump. The same strategy allowed Chinese President Xi Jinping to satisfy nationalist outrage in his country during the trade war, without the President of the United States responding.
Instead, Chinese officials have focused their response on their biggest critics within the Trump administration, including Pompeo and White House trade adviser Peter Navarro. The Chinese hawks have shown their willingness to participate, and Deputy National Security Adviser Matt Pottinger delivered a speech in Mandarin on Monday praising Chinese doctors who were reprimanded for issuing early warnings about the virus.
That balancing act is becoming more difficult as the President of the United States seeks to personally blame China for the pandemic raging in the United States and undermines his prospects for securing reelection in November. In recent days, Trump accused Beijing of deliberately mistreating an outbreak that killed more than 4,600 Chinese citizens to harm it politically and promised a “conclusive” report on the origins of the virus.
‘Like a fire’
“My opinion is that they made a mistake. They tried to cover it up. They tried to put it out, like a fire, “Trump told Fox News on Sunday.
Although the Wuhan Institute of Virology was studying bat-borne coronaviruses like the one causing Covid-19 at the time of the first known outbreak nearby, so far there has been no evidence to show that it possessed the previously unknown strain. Yuan Zhiming, director of the facility’s high-security Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory, said last month that “there is no way the virus originated from our institute.”
The closest China has come to criticize Trump directly in recent days was a statement by the Foreign Ministry on Thursday that attacked “certain American politicians.” These officials “have attempted to transfer their own responsibility for the mismanagement of the epidemic to others,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told reporters.
Tensions can only escalate as new coronavirus outbreaks alter life across the United States and Republicans seek to deflect blame in a difficult election year. The crisis has undermined the chances that the “phase one” trade agreement reached by both parties in January could help build a broader truce between the world’s two largest economies.
China has occasionally taunted Trump without criticizing him by name, such as when a Foreign Ministry spokesman circulated unsubstantiated allegations last month that US Army athletes. USA They introduced the virus to Wuhan. Trump blamed that move for his decision to start referring to the pathogen as the “Chinese virus,” a term he has refrained from using in recent weeks. Bloomberg news
