Secretary of State Mike Pompeo blasted the Chinese communist party (CCP) in a speech on Thursday, saying the U.S. must “distrust but verify” everything coming out of the country and end our “blind engagement,” with them.
Declaring at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library that “the old paradigm of blind engagement with China has failed,” Pompeo warned that “if we bend the knee now, our children’s children may be at the mercy of the CCP, whose actions are the primary challenge to the free world.”
According to Fox News:
Pompeo’s address came a day after the FBI revealed that the CCP has implemented a “program” to secretly and illegally plant military researchers in several U.S. universities to pilfer sensitive materials. Earlier in the week, the State Department announced that China’s consulate in Houston would be closed, with Pompeo saying the complex was “a hub of spying and IP theft.” China has vowed retaliation.
Against that fraught backdrop, Pompeo promised action that he distinguished from Cold War-era “containment,” which aimed to stop the spread of communism and keep the Soviet Union isolated.
“It’s true that unlike the Soviet Union, China is deeply integrated into the global economy,” he said. “But Beijing is more dependent on us than we are on them.”
In response to the U.S. shuttering China’s consulate in Houston, China ordered the U.S. consulate in Chengdu in southwestern China to close.
Yesterday, the U.S. justice department charged four Chinese researchers with visa fraud, alleging they lied about their ties to China’s military, the People’s Liberation Army. Three have been arrested and one is currently in hiding China’s San Francisco consulate. The Department of Justice said the four were part of a communist effort to “infiltrate U.S. institutions,” to steal U.S. scientific and technological knowledge.
Pompeo urged the Chinese people to break free of the communist party and work with the U.S. to try to transform the regimes behavior. The Communist Party “fears the Chinese people’s honest opinions more than any foe,” Pompeo said and that the U.S. “must also engage and empower the Chinese people.”
According to the Wall Street Journal:
The speech, called “Communist China and the Free World’s Future,” caps a series of addresses by senior officials in recent weeks focusing on what the Trump administration sees as the challenge posed by China and its expanding global reach. The uncompromising rhetoric has been accompanied by an uptick in administration pressure on Beijing—from sanctions to military exercises and indictments—as relations between the countries spiral downward to the lowest point in decades.
The Trump Administration has taken a hard stance against China, and will never bow down to the communist regime, always standing up for the American people and American interests.