Secretary of State Mike Pompeo continued his rhetorical barrage against China as the top diplomat at the Chinese consulate in Houston suggested they may defy US orders to vacate.
WashingtonSecretary of State Mike Pompeo continued his rhetorical barrage against China as the top diplomat at the Chinese consulate in Houston suggested they may defy US orders to vacate. Pompeo’s remarks at the Nixon Library Thursday, titled «Communist China and the Free World’s Future,» cast aspersions on Beijing and its relations with the US, nearly 50 years after President Richard Nixon became the first US president to travel to China. «We must admit our truth that should guide us in the years and decades to come, that if we want to have a free 21st century, and not the Chinese century of which Xi Jinping dreams, the old paradigm of blind engagement with China simply won’t get it done,» he said. «We must not continue it and we must not return to it.» He appeared to cast the US-China competition as a modern day Cold War, saying that «securing our freedoms from the Chinese Communist Party is the mission of our time and America is perfectly positioned to lead it.» Pompeo delivered the speech on the heels of a US order to close the Chinese consulate in Houston — «because it was a hub of spying and intellectual property theft,» in his words. The order — the latest in a series of escalations between Washington and Beijing — demands that the Chinese shutter the property by Friday.
