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Pompeo Shames MIT, Calls Chinese Authorities ‘Thugs In High Boots’ In Remarks On Academic Freedom
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo flagged his anti-China rhetoric on Wednesday, referring to the country’s authorities as “thugs in high boots” and also criticized the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for refusing to present his speech on threats to national security posed by Beijing. At the Georgia Institute of Technology, Pompeo, America’s top diplomat, stated in a discussion that many Chinese students doing research in the United States “go home to suffer.” “A Fulbright student coming from some country shouldn’t be sent back to their home country and suffer from thugs in high boots who now want to take the information they got, send them back to the United States just to have a little more. of information that they will deliver to the Chinese. [Ministry of State Security] … Or the People’s Liberation Army, “he said. Get the latest insights and analysis from our Global Impact newsletter on the great stories originating from China.” MIT was not interested in inviting me to their campus to give this exact set of comments Pompeo said in his keynote address. The school’s rector, L. Rafael Reif, added, “hinted that my arguments could insult his ethnic Chinese students and teachers.” MIT offered another explanation for its decision. The university’s director of media relations, Kimberly Allen, said that when the State Department contacted MIT about the visit in August, “the institute was … simply welcoming seniors and graduate students to campus. for a fall semester governed by strict density constraints on campus and had real concerns that a high-profile visit would not only draw crowds but would suggest students that MIT was not taking its own rules seriously. “” The president Reif verbally conveyed MIT’s decision, based on a commitment to the health of our students and our surrounding community, with his deep regret, “he added. The MIT president criticizes Washington for “ unfounded suspicions ” about Chinese academics Pompeo also called for stricter evaluations of incoming Chinese students and accused Wesleyan College of Georgia, Columbia University and the University of Washington of cooperating with China. in a way that threatens American national security. The Communist Party of China (CCP) “does not just target Chinese citizens,” he said. “They also want to influence American students. Teachers and administrators too. They know that left-wing college campuses are rife with anti-Americanism and present easy targets for anti-American messages. ” Pompeo also turned to Huawei Technologies, the Chinese telecommunications giant whose reach on 5G networks the United States expects to see restricted around the world. world; The secretary of state has tried to convince other governments to limit their approval of Huawei systems, saying they pose a security threat. Dan Blumenthal, director of Asian Studies for the Washington American Enterprise Institute think tank, said the Pompeo’s frequent and public attacks on the Chinese government makes sense because the espionage activities emanating from the country are administered by CCP bodies that American diplomats will never reach directly. “The US government has been trying for 20 or 30 years to deal with the diplomatic challenges posed by China,” Blumenthal said. “What we found, because the CCP and the party run things, and not the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA), is that it is a completely different type of threat, and it is a threat that the MOFA will never admit, because it is the party. organs that make things work. The US defense bill includes 5G rules to pressure Huawei, ZTE “Unless you speak directly to the head of these party organs, with whom we are never allowed to speak, you will get nowhere” added. . The MOFA “has no power and, in some cases, has no knowledge of what the party’s international arms are doing.” Pompeo reiterated his claim that Beijing could use Huawei’s systems to steal personal data, and also suggested that his campaign aimed to secure Western dominance of next-generation 5G technology. Huawei’s 5G facilities “had a huge national security risk that I had seen in my previous position,” he said, alluding to his time as director of the US Central Intelligence Agency, “but it had a huge commercial risk… That the West, that the rule-based system would not be the winner in 5G technology ”. The United States accuses 10 Chinese agents of hacking aviation companies Blumenthal also noted that many cases of alleged Chinese espionage have come to light since previous diplomatic negotiations with China, including an agreement between former US President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2015 that neither of the two governments of the countries.For example, US agents arrested a senior Beijing intelligence official in 2018 for allegedly attempting to steal trade secrets from GE Aviation and other US aerospace companies after luring the suspect to Belgium in the past. which the United States Department of Justice described as “an unprecedented extradition”. The defendant, Xu Yanjun, is a senior MSS official, according to court documents. Federal court proceedings are ongoing for at least a dozen people with suspected links to MSS. More from the South China Morning Post: * As academic ties between the US and China unravel, Malaysia could fill the void * Pompeo wants the Confucius Institutes of China to disappear from the US by the end of the year * Secretary of US state Mike Pompeo calls the Communist Party of China the “ central threat of our times. ” Authorities ‘booted thugs’ in comments on academic freedom first appeared on the South China Morning Post For the latest news from the South China Morning Post, download our mobile app. Copyright 2020.
