Secretary of State Mike Pompeo during a press conference at the State Department in Washington, November 18, 2019.
Yara Nardi | Reuters
WASHINGTON – Secretary of State Mike Pompeo closed a series of scorching speeches by Trump administration officials and criticized the Chinese government on Thursday in a broad speech, saying the United States will no longer tolerate the Beijing playbook to usurp the global order.
“The truth is that our policies, and those of other free nations, resurrected China’s bankrupt economy, only to see Beijing bite the international hands that fed it,” Pompeo told an audience at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library in Yorba. Linda, California.
The crumbling relationship between Washington and Beijing, strained by an ongoing trade battle, has intensified as the Trump administration blames China for the coronavirus pandemic and its devastation in the global economy.
This week, in another sign of mounting tension, the United States government ordered the closure of the Chinese consulate in Houston. Beijing promised to retaliate.
“We open our arms to Chinese citizens, only to see the CCP exploit our free and open society. It sent propagandists to our press conferences, our research centers, our high schools and universities,” the nation’s top diplomat said Thursday. . that the Chinese government had also “defrauded our precious intellectual property” and “absorbed America’s supply chains.”
Pompeo then turned his attention to Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei, a company he previously described as a “Trojan horse for Chinese intelligence.”
“We have stopped pretending that Huawei is an innocent telecommunications company … we have called it what it is, a threat to national security, and have taken action accordingly,” he said.
US officials have long complained that the theft of Chinese intellectual property has cost the economy billions of dollars in revenue and thousands of jobs. They have also said that it threatens national security. Meanwhile, Beijing maintains that it does not engage in intellectual property theft.
Pompeo’s comments follow those of United States Attorney General William Barr, National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien and FBI Director Christopher Wray.
In a scorching speech last week, Barr accused the Chinese government of human rights abuses, espionage and economic bombardment.
“The American people are more attuned than ever to the threat posed by the Chinese Communist Party not only to our way of life, but also to our own lives and livelihoods,” Barr said.
Last month, O’Brien criticized China for a list of offenses before saying that “the days of American passivity and naivete regarding the People’s Republic of China are over.”
Similarly, Wray said the Trump administration would not allow the Chinese to continue spying and cyber attacks on the United States, which amounts to what he called “one of the largest transfers of wealth in human history.”
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