Pompeo hammers China over international abuses
Washington: Capping a string of searing speeches by Trump administration officials, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo slammed the Chinese government in a sweeping address Thursday, saying the United States will no longer tolerate Beijing’s playbook to usurp global order.
“The truth is that our policies, and those of other free nations, resurrected China’s failing 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 from an ongoing trade battle, has intensified as the Trump administration places blame squarely on China for the coronavirus pandemic and its devastation on the global economy.
This week, in another sign of escalating tension, the U.S. government ordered the closure of the Chinese consulate in Houston. Beijing vowed to retaliate.
“We opened our arms to Chinese citizens, only to see the CCP exploit our free and open society. It sent propagandists into our press conferences, our research centers, our high-school and college campuses,” the nation’s top diplomat said Thursday, adding that the Chinese government had also “ripped off our prized intellectual property” and “sucked supply chains away from America.”
