Vilifying China, Pompeo Reaches a New Low

While China is doing its best to combat the new coronavirus and pneumonia epidemic, the United States Secretary of State Mike Pompeo still manages to attack and defame China. Without a doubt, this kind of behavior is a shameful example of hitting someone when he is down, and reflects just how stubborn Pompeo’s anti-China stance is. One could say it’s reached the point of hysteria.

In a speech at the National Governors Association meeting in Washington on Feb. 8, Pompeo warned U.S. governors to maintain a cautious mindset when engaging in business with China. He intimated that the U.S. is currently competing with China at the federal, state and local levels, and that Beijing will attempt to use American openness to destroy the United States. One can simply sum up the speech as follows: China is bad, you (U.S. governors) must be careful!

Pompeo’s words are nothing new. He has already expressed this sour view on various occasions many times in the past. But unlike before, Pompeo delivered this speech to governors, suggesting more ruthless intentions this time. Some analysts say this was Pompeo’s attempt at mobilizing governors to guard against China, and that the strategic competition between China and the U.S. has spread to these localities.

We know that the U.S. is a federalist government and that each state has relative autonomy. The attitudes of different states toward China differ from each other and from those of the federal government. Some states have a consistently close and cooperative relationship with China, and these states do not approve of the federal policies toward China as influenced by Pompeo and other extremely conservative politicians. Pompeo was obviously dissatisfied with this, and in his speech, he berated governors who have a such a positive relationship with China. He also did all he could to urge more governors to adopt his tough stance on China. It must be said that Pompeo is destructively misleading these state leaders.

Pompeo is currently the secretary of state, in charge of foreign diplomacy, yet he still speaks with the tone of a special agent. It appears that Pompeo, who was once the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, cannot escape his intelligence agent way of thinking and speaking. This, in fact, dooms him to interpreting China in a distorted and defamatory way. Because he is accustomed to lying, cheating and stealing, Pompeo assumes that other people act like him as well. He claims that China’s regular and mutually beneficial contact with American states demonstrates China’s ulterior motives. He imagines China’s cultural institutions as one would imagine an extension of the CIA, and describes Chinese exchange students as if they were secret agents. Pompeo fills his mind with dirty political schemes.

In slandering and vilifying China, Pompeo completely disregards the facts; no rational person with good judgment could believe and accept his allegations. Pompeo has recently raced around the entire world, slandering China everywhere he goes and doing his best at provocation. However, he has seen few results, even among U.S. allies, where there are few who agree with his ideas, demonstrating that everyone else has a more rational way of thinking about China.

The domestic situation in the U.S. may be more complicated: McCarthyism has already resurfaced to a certain extent as Pompeo readily dons his national security cap, a development which will certainly have a chilling effect and exert a destructive influence on China-U.S. relations. But we don’t need to exaggerate Pompeo’s destructive capabilities. The healthy development of China-U.S. relations and cooperation between the two countries − rather than antagonism − is in the basic interests of both countries. No matter how fervently Pompeo opposes China, he cannot change this fact. Another key issue for Pompeo is the fact that the number of Americans who agree with his madness is limited.

We cannot control Pompeo’s mouth. It is almost certain that he will launch both open and covert attacks on China whenever he gets a chance. China can only stride forward until it moves beyond Pompeo’s range of fire.