China says US is using ‘gangster logic’ after Washington calls Beijing a ‘thuggish regime’
- Foreign ministry commissioner’s office in Hong Kong also calls comments by a US State Department spokeswoman ‘blatant slander against China’
- Morgan Ortagus had accused the Chinese government of being behind the leak of a US diplomat’s personal details after she met pro-democracy activists
China on Friday hit back at the United States, accusing Washington of applying “gangster logic” after an official described Beijing as a “thuggish regime”.
Remarks made by US State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus were also defamatory, according to the Office of the Commissioner of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Hong Kong.
“The spokesperson at the commissioner’s office denounced the claim as a blatant slander against China, which has confounded right with wrong and again exposed US gangster logic and hegemonic thinking. China deplores and firmly opposes the remarks,” the statement said.
“I don’t think that leaking an American diplomat’s private information, pictures, names of their children – I don’t think that is a formal protest, that is what a thuggish regime would do,” Ortagus said at a news briefing in Washington.
