WASHINGTON: US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has lashed out against China for its aggressive military behaviour and the threat posed by the Chinese Communist Party to the Quad group of countries, including India as well as Beijing’s response to the handling of the Covid virus.
In several interviews after his return from the Quad ministerial meeting in Japan, Pompeo on Friday (local time) pointed out how the Chinese have begun to amass huge forces against India and that Indians are seeing 60,000 Chinese soldiers on their northern border.
Speaking on The Guy Benson Show, Pompeo said: “A million people are now dead because the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) didn’t respond to the Wuhan virus in a way that they should have. Economies have been destroyed as a direct result of that. The Indians are seeing 60,000 Chinese soldiers on their northern border.”
The US Secretary of State reiterated this in an interview with Larry O’Conner while speaking about his “important trip” in which he met his Indian counterpart S Jaishankar along with those from Japan and Australia, to further efforts to “build out the coalition that is working to ensure that the Chinese Communist Party doesn’t become the global hegemon that it seeks to become.”
“The Chinese have now begun to amass huge forces against India in the north,” Pompeo told O’Conner.
Pompeo also talked about the important allies of the United States in Asia.
“They absolutely need the United States to be their ally and partner in this fight. But they’ve all seen it, whether it’s the Indians, who are actually having a physical confrontation with the Chinese up in the Himalayas in the northeastern part of India – right? – the Chinese have now begun to amass huge forces against India in the north – whether it’s the Australians who did the simple thing of saying the Chinese screwed this deal up with the virus, and we’d like to understand what happened and said we ought to have a full investigation, and in exchange for that, the Chinese Communist Party began to extort, coerce, bully the Australians,” Pompeo said.
He also alleged the previous US administration had ‘bent a knee’, and had allowed China to steal their intellectual properties and jobs.
“For decades, the West allowed the Chinese Communist Party to walk all over us. The previous administration bent a knee, too often allowed China to steal our intellectual properties and the millions of jobs that came along with it. They see that in their country too,” he mentioned.
“I was with my foreign minister counterparts from India, Australia, and Japan – a format that we call the Quad, four big democracies, four powerful economies, four nations, each of whom have real risk associated with the threats imposed – attempting to be imposed by the Chinese Communist Party. And they see it in their home countries too. They see the people of their nations understanding that we all slept on this for too long,” Pompeo added.
“The Australians saw that when they did – had the temerity to simply ask for an investigation about the virus that the Chinese began to exert economic power against them and to try to coerce and bully them,” Pompeo said.
The Quad foreign ministers meeting in Tokyo took place on Tuesday.
Relations between the US and China have worsened in recent times with the two countries sparring over a range of issues including Beijing’s territorial aggression in the South China Sea and the Chinese government’s handling of the COVID-19 crisis.
Further, Pompeo also talked about a recent Pew Research Center survey in which negative opinions of China has reached a record high in most of the 14 countries polled.
“Every one of these countries has seen this, and frankly, we – they all sat on it for decades, too, but now the world can begin to see it. The people in each of these countries – I think I saw a poll that said 81 percent of Australians now understand the Chinese Communist Party presents a threat to them. The world has awakened. The tide’s begun to turn. And the United States under President Trump’s leadership has now built out a coalition that will push back against the threat and maintain good order, the rule of law, and the basic civic decency that comes from democracies controlling the world and not authoritarian regimes,” he told Larry O’ Conner.
On the Hugh Hewitt show, Pompeo talked about the “push back against Chinese Communist Party predatory activity” by the four democracies of Quad- India, Japan, Australia and the US.
The Indians have banned dozens and dozens of Chinese apps, and the Indians have stopped having their government purchase any product from China. That’s remarkable. It’s work that has been done diplomatically, and then there are the security issues too.” (ANI)
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