Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Wednesday declared that the “tide is absolutely turning” against China.
Since his last State Department press briefing, Pompeo said, the world has witnessed more examples of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s efforts to coerce and control its citizens, and that other nations and the U.S. have put out “a number of statements”:
We see it in Hong Kong, where authorities have delayed legislative elections, arrested pro-democracy activists, issued warrants for freedom-loving foreigners, including an American. We see the CCP’s continuing ambition to control Muslim minorities in Xinjiang. And I commend the Treasury Department for using its Global Magnitsky authorities against human-rights violators there just this past week. And we see, too, the CCP’s lawlessness elsewhere in the world. I issued a statement on Sunday about the Chinese-flagged vessels’ predatory fishing practices around the Galapagos Islands, which has alarmed our friends in Ecuador.
He added, “Look, these aren’t one-offs. As I said at the Nixon Library this month, freedom-loving nations must come together to confront the CCP’s aggressive behavior. And the good news is the tide is absolutely turning.”
“The central idea of distrust and then verify, I think the world is coming to see as the right approach to responding to these challenges. And we are working in this administration, the Trump administration, hard to protect Americans from those threats,” he said.
Recently, the United Kingdom joined the U.S. in banning equipment from Chinese telecommunications company Huawei from its 5G networks, and stripping out all existing equipment by 2027.
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