“We already know the nature of this regime, and frankly, all freedom-loving people around the world know the nature of dictatorships throughout history.” “Yet we have ignored it.”
“President Trump realized it when he began his campaign and inauguration. We have now fundamentally changed the way the West – not just the United States – looks at China. You look at Europe, Australia and Southeast Asia, and they all know it too.” Pompeo said in an interview on Monday (Jan. 4).
In this episode we have Secretary of State Mike Pompeo interviewed on the show.
This is American Thought Leaders, and I’m Jan Jekielek.
Jan Jekielek: Welcome to American Thought Leaders.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo: Thank you for inviting me.
Why the U.S. Has Ignored the Nature of Communist China in the Past
Jan Jekielek Yang: When you gave your speech at the Nixon Library, the last in a series of four speeches on China policy, you mentioned that Chinese dissidents have been warning people about the nature of the Chinese Communist Party for decades, but have largely ignored it. You have changed that to some extent by welcoming a range of dissidents to talk to you and then learn about that. And on International Human Rights Day, you actually sanctioned a Chinese Communist Party official for grossly violating the human rights of Falun Gong practitioners for the first time in the 21 years that this group has been persecuted in China. We also wrote an editorial about it. We have reported extensively on this issue. So why do you think it took so long?
Pompeo: Oh my God! It’s a complicated issue, and it goes back to Tiananmen Square (the June 4 incident). We already know the nature of this regime, and frankly, all freedom-loving people around the world know the nature of dictatorial regimes throughout history.
Yet we have ignored it. We ignore it in part because our foreign policy establishment is convinced that if we trade enough with them, if we engage with them, the Chinese Communist Party will engage with the world on at least a fair, reciprocal basis in some areas.
That’s clearly wrong, from start to finish, and yet the resistance from many quarters is enormous, for many reasons, some economic, some indeed because some people think they can go to a better place, which is clearly not true.
President Trump realized that when he started his campaign and his inauguration. We have now fundamentally changed the way the West – not just the United States – looks at China. You look at Europe, Australia and Southeast Asia, and they all know it, too.
They knew that the Chinese Communist Party had evil intentions, so we ignored these dissidents when they sounded the alarm and told us about these problems. We had other challenges at the time, we were involved in a very harsh anti-terrorist operation, so to speak, so we took our attention away from this huge threat and now it’s come upon us and it’s now coming through the door. The Chinese Communist Party has entered the United States and the Trump administration has begun to turn the ship in the right direction from all sides to get the United States to do the right thing again and protect itself from the Chinese Communist threat.
Religious freedom is at the heart of every civilization
JACKIE YOUNG: You have focused on religious freedom more than any Secretary of State that I can remember. Certainly, this dimension is very pertinent to the issue of China. Why do you say that? Why is it important?
Pompeo: It’s at the heart of every civilization that believes that human beings have inherent dignity because of goodness, and if you do wrong, bad things will follow, including a lot of diplomatic things, some military things, and a lot of bad things will follow. So, under President Trump, we are concerned about religious freedom not only in China, but elsewhere as well.
Especially dealing with the Chinese Communist Party, we’ve seen what they’ve done to the Uighurs in western China. What they’ve done to the Tibetans. We’re now seeing them do the same thing to other minorities, including the people in Inner Mongolia and northern China.
And then the Christians across the country, yes, the Bible is being Sinicized, and these are fundamental insults to human dignity and the hallmarks of totalitarian regimes, and General Secretary Xi Jinping is no exception. He knows he must expand his ever-growing power and control to maintain his dominance.
This closes off a vital space of religious freedom that every person in the world should have. We’ve done our best to make that clear, whether it’s speaking to leaders at the Vatican or to religious leaders elsewhere in the world, and for me personally, having the opportunity to meet some of the people who have been persecuted or whose families have been persecuted has been a rare personal experience and has opened my eyes to these noble, amazing people who simply want to have the right to defend their conscience of their rights.
I’m proud of the work that the State Department is doing, and I’m proud of President Trump and our government for all that they’re doing. I believe the world will continue to support the idea that the Chinese Communist Party should allow people to exercise and practice their God-given rights, rather than practice their beliefs in the way the Chinese Communist Party chooses.
The worst tragedy of human civilization occurred in China, and the CCP is the culprit
Jacky Yang: All in all, it seems to me that you have put a lot of effort into distinguishing the concept of the Chinese nation and the CCP in people’s minds, and so has the State Council. Why is this so important to you?
Pompeo: Oh, it’s a long story. China has many dynasties, a long and storied history, and the people who live here are good people. Sadly, they lived under the yoke of an authoritarian regime and were deprived of the ability to raise children. For a long time, they were not even capable of having children the way they wished, and selective abortions occurred. In the last 50 years, some of the worst tragedies of human civilization have occurred within the borders of China.
But the culprits were not the people, but the thieves who drove state-owned enterprises to do things that were out of step with the way the world works, to lift some people out of poverty while denying the basic political freedoms to which everyone is entitled, and that’s why I admire the Chinese people.
I believe the Chinese people want to go down a different path. They want freedom, but the Chinese Communist Party refuses to give it to them, believing that they must be kept apart.
Great Chinese people live all over the world, including in the United States. We want to honor them, we admire them. We hope they will join us in calling for a change in the way and nature of this regime’s behavior in its international activities.
The U.S.-China relationship is forever changing and sobering the world
JACKIE YOUNG: So you’ve said that at the moment, we can never really go back to the status quo in the U.S.-China relationship, which was basically the status quo four or five years ago. The problem is, as I recall, you are the 70th Secretary of State and there have been more personnel changes than the President.
Pompeo: Yes, I’ve always joked about that idea, yes.
JACKIE YOUNG: So how can you make sure that that policy toward China stays the same the next time there’s a change in personnel?
Pompeo: I don’t think people around the world are going to let that happen. I certainly think Americans are more comfortable with that threat now. For a long time, American leaders denied that this was happening.
I think it’s that people don’t see or feel it, or their leaders tell them, “It’s OK, it’s OK if they steal technology inventions from Kansas or Iowa and therefore steal millions of jobs, or they steal technology inventions from Silicon Valley or the Boston corridor.”
American leaders said, “It’s okay, we’re going to make a killing, don’t worry about it.” Those days are gone. I think people also saw through the Wuhan virus.
I think they’ve been able to see the regime for what it is up close and personal all over the world. That’s what I see in the polling data, but more importantly, as I travel around the world and talk to people, I find that they understand the nature of this regime in a way that they didn’t three, four or five years ago.
I think we’re partly responsible for that, and the good thing is nobody wants to go back to the past. Whether it’s in Indonesia or Vietnam or Singapore, no one will say there’s nothing wrong with the CCP anymore because they see it. They see it very clearly, so I believe the pressure that the CCP is under right now is real.
It’s not just because the leaders are demanding it, but because people around the world can see it, and the true face of the CCP has been exposed.
China-EU agreement Pompeo: International rules should be followed
Jacky Yang: I tend to believe this is true. I certainly see a lot of shifts in thinking, but I’m scratching my head about this agreement on the EU-China treaty, which of course, I’m sure you know very well. I remember you even saying that you were told by people in Brussels that we were not going to go back to the status quo. This treaty, if it does go through, seems to me to be going south, like going beyond the status quo in the other direction.
Pompeo: Remember, trade can be done with China. If they’re willing to sell widgets, we’re willing to buy widgets, it’s fair and equal, on a reciprocal basis; if American companies or European companies can invest in China under the same rules that they can invest here, it doesn’t affect U.S. national security, that’s fine.
What we can’t do, and what we and the world can’t do, is what we’ve been doing for 50 years, and that is every time China asks for an exception, whether it’s an exception to national security policy, or an exception to the WTO set of trade rules, or they’ll say, “You know, the World health Organization is interesting, but frankly, we’re just not going to do what they’re asking to do, we’re going to pull their strings and politicize them.”
Those are the things that we have to stop, we can’t allow, we can’t continue to grovel to the Chinese Communist Party like we have for the last 50 years. They will gain an inch, they will do what General Secretary Xi Jinping said, gain the ability to claim hegemony and establish vassal states around the world. This is not to be tolerated.
The idea of freedom and liberty that we hold dear, the idea of freedom and liberty that our American Founding Fathers held dear, should be the rule and the basis of how the world interacts with each other for the next 50 years.
If we don’t stand up, if the West doesn’t stand up – and the West is an idea, not a position – if the West doesn’t stand up for what we know is important, then the Chinese Communist Party will in fact prevail and our children and our grandchildren will live in a very different world, and none of us want that.
The Chinese Communist Party Bribes Large Numbers of Students to Work for It
Jacky Yang: It’s a very challenging issue, at least for me, very challenging. In the United States, we still issue tens of thousands of visas to Chinese students. We already know that some of them are certainly being asked by the Chinese Communist Party to work for them in varying degrees. How do we deal with that? We’re still dealing with that, right?
Pompeo: Right, on average, there will be more than 300,000 Chinese students studying in the United States every year. If those students want to come here to study and be exposed to the West, that’s great. And frankly, that’s a good thing. They’re going to come back to their own country, and they’re going to see the freedom, the ability to raise your family freely, and they’re going to get a taste of what that’s like.
That’s good. Sadly, what we experienced was that the Chinese Communist Party, the Ministry of State Security and the People’s Liberation Army – the security apparatus within China – bought these people off in large numbers.
We drove out thousands of people that we could easily identify. This had never happened before. We’re now doing more work in schools to make them aware of the risks associated with funding and research programs that the CCP has infiltrated or at least has access to, so we’re putting our research institutions in a much more favorable place.
We have closed a large number of Confucius Institutes to make them aware of the essence of what they are. I travel in the United States and sometimes I get criticized for that, but I travel in the United States to tell that story.
Communist China has entered the Western door
Pompeo: I’ve given speeches at Georgia Tech, I’ve given speeches in Wisconsin, talking about the fact that the Chinese Communist Party has entered our gates, our government, our institutions of higher education, our research institutions.
If we can right the ship, if we can control and make sure that our security elements are properly protected, then it’s perfectly fine to have Chinese students studying here.
But the whole world needs to do that, not just U.S. institutions. They’re studying at institutions in Australia, in Europe and around the world. It’s not just a challenge for the United States, the whole world has to take on that responsibility.
Certainly, as you’ve described, there have been very significant changes. At the same time, as far as I know, we’re seeing Wall Street or the investment community moving full steam ahead into China.
I think that’s changed a little bit as well, in part because of the policies that President Trump has adopted. But I think during the New Crown pneumonia epidemic, a lot of them also saw the real face of the Chinese Communist Party, the corruption of its institutions, and the way that state-owned enterprises have competed over the last few years in ways that I don’t think they fully recognized before.
The supply chain is shifting elsewhere
Pompeo: So you’re starting to see the supply chain moving elsewhere. I think the business community today has a much greater awareness of the political risks of doing business within China, which didn’t exist two or three years ago. It’s true that there’s still a lot of investment going on there.
I’m reminded of President Trump saying, “Great, if we can do things in a fair and reciprocal way, we’ve achieved the purpose of the trade agreement. If we can do this in a fair and reciprocal way, that’s great. We have to address our security issues.”
But I think the investment community and the business community have begun to consider the challenge of the CCP, even though change is often slow, sometimes one step forward and multiple steps left and right, and they recognize that and will begin to redirect and implement central policies to protect Americans as well as our domestic security.
That makes military sense and it makes deep economic sense, and we want to make sure that people in the United States can get good paying jobs and that the Chinese Communist Party doesn’t do something totally unacceptable and steal good paying jobs from us.
The Chinese Communist Party breaks promise after promise
Jacky Yang: So you’ve identified this “distrust but verify” approach, which I think mimics or is based on Reagan’s approach. Some people think that’s too hostile language for another country, especially for a big country like China.
Pompeo: I’ve been a member of Congress for six years and in the Trump administration for four years, and all of my experiences during that time have shown that it’s foolish to be suspicious of anything but from the Chinese Communist Party.
They have broken promise after promise, not just to the United States, but to the world, to the people of Hong Kong, to mainland China’s own people, to President Obama, saying that they would not militarize the South China Sea.
Time and time again, the Chinese Communist Party has promised that if they have a viral problem, they will go public. These promises are endless, and to this day, they still won’t allow the World Health Organization to launch an investigation into the source of this virus.
But they agreed. No, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with “mistrust but verify” as the core model for the U.S. in dealing with the CCP, unlike what you’re saying others are saying.
Is the Chinese Communist Party all around us interfering in the U.S. election?
JACKIE YOUNG: You mentioned the Chinese activities around the epidemic. That’s an interesting question. People are talking everywhere about foreign interference in elections and so on. We know there’s a delayed report being put together right now on this. As far as I know, we know that the Chinese Communist Party is involved. At the very least, the way they handled the virus apparently had a profound effect on the election. I don’t think anybody would deny that. What do you think?
Pompeo: I can’t say much, I’ll let the intelligence community do their job and release their reports appropriately, but the American people deserve to know. I spoke about this in Wisconsin.
The Chinese Communist Party is all around us, and they are working in our schools. They’re working in our associations and institutions under the guise of so-called civic organizations, when, in fact, it’s an integral part of the Chinese Communist Party’s information gathering efforts.
It’s a different form of threat, different in nature from what we’ve seen for a long time, and the response that we need must be different as well.
This is certainly true for the election. The Chinese Communist Party is clearly lobbying hard and leaving no stone unturned. They have consulates all over the United States, and their diplomats are engaging in behavior that is inconsistent with what we should be doing as diplomats. We closed one of them because it was clear that they were spying outside of the Houston consulate.
But the American people need to remain vigilant, and we need to realize that the Chinese Communist Party is not acting in the interests of the United States in the way that they are acting. The American leadership needs to make that clear to the American people.
The world’s efforts to protect human rights are unraveling and need to be revived
Jacky Yang: We are coming to the end of our discussion, but there is one thing I would like to ask you that I think many people may not be aware of, and that is the Committee on Inalienable Rights, which I think is the right name, which you are in charge of. Could you briefly tell us why this is so important to you? What is the purpose of it?
Pompeo: Let’s start here, this set of rights was recognized, not created, by our founding fathers. They recognized that everything that God has provided to each of us is at the heart of the American story, and that our particular people rely on our fundamental understanding of America in a way that must be the same as our forefathers: rights based on the Judeo-Christian tradition, natural rights, that God has granted to each of us.
I have watched around the world, observed the efforts to protect human rights from the beginning of the 20th century to the present century, and I see that effort unraveling, at least in the United States, beginning with the unraveling of our founding principles.
I wanted to bring in some experts on human rights to look at this issue, so I formed a committee headed by Mary Ann Glendon.
We encouraged people of different faiths and political backgrounds to go back to the founding of our country and ask them, “Tell me, how can our foreign policy be effectively rooted in the American tradition?” I asked them to do that. It’s interesting because they’re also looking at other traditions around the world, human rights traditions. We’ve launched a global initiative to talk about these important things, these inherent rights that are important to all of us.
I hope all your viewers will go see this short report, it’s about 50 pages long, and they should go see it. It traces the history, reminds us of the greatness of America, how smart and capable our Founding Fathers were, and understands why it played a key role in the success that our country has achieved.
These rights are important. If all rights are respected, our foreign policy can be implemented in a principled way. I want us to return to that tradition.
JACKIE YOUNG: Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, thanks for the interview.
Pompeo: Thank you! I’m glad to see you, too. Thank you!
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