Mike Pompeo urges US states to beware of China’s ‘sinister’ attempts at engagement
- The US secretary of state also encourages greater cooperation with Taiwan by local officials
- ‘General Secretary Xi thinks you’re the weak link,’ Pompeo tells state lawmakers
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called on American state governments to reject appeals from China for closer ties and asked them to cooperate more with Taiwan.
Warning about Beijing’s attempts to sidestep road blocks erected by Washington on the federal level, Pompeo told state lawmakers in Madison, Wisconsin, that overtures from Chinese diplomats, Chinese nationals or “Americans working with [Chinese Communist Party]-linked interests” were often part of a plot to further “Beijing’s form of authoritarianism”.
03:02
Trump and Xi trade barbs over Covid-19 as world leaders voice fears at UN’s 75th General Assembly
The top US diplomat cited entreaties this year by an official from China’s Chicago consulate to Wisconsin Senate President Roger Roth for his chamber to pass a resolution praising Beijing’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic as an example of attempts to co-opt state-level officials.
He called these efforts “a much more sinister vision of engagement” compared with initiatives by other countries to burnish their image overseas, such as France’s Alliance Français language and culture schools.
US accusations that China deliberately delayed warning the world about the novel coronavirus have further strained a relationship already damaged by a trade war that US President Donald Trump started more than two years ago.