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US presidential election 2020
OpinionLetters

Letters | As US and China trade blows, Pompeo’s tough talk is not the way to go

  • Mike Pompeo may despise dialogue but he should realise that China is not the Soviet Union during the Cold War. His fiery rhetoric will only help unite the Chinese people behind the Communist Party and raise tensions when dialogue and trust are the need of the hour

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A local resident displays a Chinese national flag as he shouts “China carry on! Long Live China, Long Live the Communist Party!”, on top of a block of flats opposite the US consulate general in Chengdu, Sichuan province, on July 26. The Chinese government ordered the consulate to close, after the US told the Chinese Consulate General in Houston to do the same the previous week. Photo: Simon Song
Letters
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo recently delivered a blistering speech on the failure of the US policy on China in the past decades (“Pompeo urges China’s citizens to help change Beijing’s ‘behaviour’”, July 24. Pompeo is playing the China card again to counter the worsening re-election chances for the Trump administration.

The China card is always played in an US election year. But in a digitalised, pluralistic world, it may not be so easy to achieve the expected results, as the facts about China will inevitably reach people around the world, including the US public.

Pompeo’s confrontational strategy may work somewhat but, as history has shown and will prove, the United States will not override China and vice versa, simply because the two nations are too important to be ignored, though they have different social systems.

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To some degree, Pompeo’s confrontational rhetoric can further unite China and help it to grow and develop more independently. This trend has continued since the US-China trade war first broke out in March 2018 and is likely to continue in this century.

In his speech, Pompeo also targeted the role of China’s Communist Party, identifying it as the major threat to the US-China relationship, in an effort to isolate the party from the Chinese people. However, according to a recent Edelman survey, 95 per cent of the Chinese public say they trust the Chinese government, a much higher rate than that approval rating of the US public towards the government of President Donald Trump.

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‘Frankenstein’ China requires more assertive global response, says US top diplomat Pompeo

‘Frankenstein’ China requires more assertive global response, says US top diplomat Pompeo
As Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, put it, “all this … will be for the Chinese people and their leaders to determine” and Pompeo has sought to commit the US to a confrontational path that is doomed to lead to failure.
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