Mike Pompeo says US treatment of Hong Kong depends on how Beijing treats it
- The US secretary of state says that he would monitor the Legislative Council elections in Hong Kong very closely
- ‘That will tell us everything we need to know about the Chinese Communist Party’s intentions with respect to freedom in Hong Kong,’ Pompeo says
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Friday that how his nation regards Hong Kong in the future depends in large part on how China does.
“To the extent Hong Kong is treated by the Chinese Communist Party as just another piece of mainland China, there’s no reason for the US to treat it any differently,” he said during a video conference of the Copenhagen Democracy Summit.
Last month, following Beijing’s move to impose a national security law on Hong Kong that critics said would undermine the city’s semi-autonomous status, US President Donald Trump removed Hong Kong’s special trading status.
While Pompeo refused to say what steps the White House might take – “I don’t want to foreclose anything the president might choose to do,” he said – he did stress that the US would monitor the Legislative Council elections in Hong Kong, now scheduled for September.
“That’s not that far off,” he said. “We should all watch very closely whether those elections are permitted to take place in a free and fair fashion.
“I think that will tell us everything we need to know about the Chinese Communist Party’s intentions with respect to freedom in Hong Kong,” he said.
Ex-Occupy leaders seek opposition camp’s endorsement in Legislative Council elections
At the forum, which was hosted by Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the former secretary general of Nato, Pompeo also discussed his meeting on Wednesday in Hawaii with China’s top diplomat, Yang Jiechi.
During the session with Yang, Pompeo said, the Group of Seven’s statement on Hong Kong arrived, showing how united the major countries would be – and how “isolated” China would look – if it failed to honour the international obligations it had made.
“When I met with my Chinese counterpart, he could see it happening,” Pompeo said. “While we were meeting, a statement from all G7 members came out about Hong Kong.
“The timing, I’d love to claim, was intentional and very well thought out,” he continued. “The truth of the matter was we were just doing what freedom-loving people do: continuing to demand an ever more expansive version of freedom, and forcing as best we can other countries to honour commitments they have made.”
In the statement, the G7 foreign ministers “strongly urge the government of China to reconsider this decision” to impose a national security law on Hong Kong, saying the move would “jeopardise the system which has allowed Hong Kong to flourish and made it a success over many years”.
Light on detail, Trump’s plan to strip Hong Kong of special status concerns economists
Pompeo’s meeting with Yang was the first high-level face-to-face meeting between the world’s two biggest economies since the Covid-19 pandemic, which has escalated into another front in the countries’ geopolitical fight.
“It was a long overdue meeting,” Pompeo said. “I had a very frank conversation but we still don’t have an answer” on issues like Covid 19’s origin, he added.
Asked if the US used the meeting to reset its relations with China, Pompeo reiterated US grievances about the country’s government, adding: “As America’s most senior diplomat, it is always useful to be in a room together to have a conversation and to share the principles upon which your policy is based. That’s the conversation we had.”
