Former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Thursday (Feb. 4) that the Communist Party’s move to sanction him and other former Trump administration officials was a message to the Biden administration. Pompeo also said that the Chinese Communist Party sanctions were instead a “badge of honor.
Pompeo again urged the Biden Administration not to appease the Chinese Communist Party.
“The purpose of the sanctions (by the Chinese Communist Party) is to do one thing, and that is to send a message to the next administration, the Biden administration, that if you really want to protect America, protect American sovereignty, protect American jobs, protect American wealth ……, you will be punished.” Pompeo said on Fox Business News’ “Mornings with Maria” on Thursday.
He added, “So they [the Chinese Communist Party] are trying to send a message to the current secretary of state, the national security adviser, saying, ‘Be careful, don’t do the right thing for the United States, don’t protect Americans, and if you do that, you will be punished personally.'”
Pompeo Responds to Communist China Sanctions
On January 20, just after U.S. President Donald Trump left office, the Chinese Communist Party’s Foreign Ministry announced sanctions against Pompeo and 28 others. The 28 members of the Trump Administration and their families are banned from entering mainland China and Hong Kong and Macau, and they and their affiliated companies and institutions are restricted from dealing and doing business with China, the CCP Foreign Ministry said.
In addition to Pompeo, other officials sanctioned by the CPC include former White House trade adviser Peter Navarro, former health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, former national security adviser Robert O’Brien, former national security adviser John Bolton, former U.S. Under Secretary of State Keith Krach and former senior Trump adviser Steve Bannon.
Pompeo on Thursday laughed off the Communist Party’s sanctions against him as a “badge of honor. Former Undersecretary Clothier also said in a Fox interview that he sees the sanctions as a badge of honor for himself.
Top congressional Republicans urged the Biden administration to take strong measures against the Chinese Communist regime.
Pompeo Again Urges Biden Administration to Refrain from Appeasement Policy Toward Communist China
Pompeo went on to say, “We [the Trump administration] have taken seriously 50 years of failed policy [toward China], reversing it and giving real weight to protecting Americans from the threat that the Chinese Communist Party poses to each and every one of us.”
President Trump’s administration was marked by a year-long trade war between the U.S. and China, during which the Trump administration imposed tariffs on hundreds of billions of Chinese imports and countered Chinese technology companies that attempted to collect U.S. data, while condemning the Chinese Communist Party for human rights violations such as repression and persecution of religious beliefs in Xinjiang and Hong Kong. In the final days of the Trump administration, Pompeo declared that the CCP was practicing genocide in regards to religious minorities.
In 2020, the U.S. government called for holding the CCP responsible for causing the global spread of COVID-19, and then-President Trump ordered the United States to withdraw from the World Health Organization (WHO) after it helped the CCP conceal the virus and spread the outbreak.
In the interview, Pompeo highlighted the Trump administration’s aggressive offensive approach to confronting the CCP, particularly on issues such as trade and stopping CCP infiltration of the United States, reversing a decades-long policy of appeasement of U.S.-China relations.
“The strategy that has been in place for decades is appeasement, tolerance, chasing a dollar inside China in exchange for some cheap labor, which has been extremely damaging to ordinary citizens across America.” He said.
Pompeo added that the United States has lost tens of millions of jobs because previous U.S. administrations refused to tell the Chinese Communist Party, “You can’t dump your products here [in the United States], you can’t steal our intellectual property.”
The former secretary of state added that these were decades of failures by U.S. leaders against the American people, and that the Trump administration reversed it.
On Jan. 26, Pompeo was interviewed by Fox News host Maria Bartiromo, who asked at the Time if the Biden administration and new Secretary of State Antony Blinken understood the current threats facing the United States.
Pompeo replied, “I think they do, I think they see it, and I hope they get it right.”
“Backing down will not cause the Communist Party to change its direction or course. Quite the contrary, they need to see fierce resistance and the ability to demonstrate the ability to make them pay.” He added.
Pompeo said, “The next administration has a responsibility – a serious responsibility – to continue to tell the Chinese Communist Party that we are not going to go back to the appeasement policies of the last 40 or 50 years.”
Status of Top Biden Administration Officials’ China Policy
On February 4, President Biden released a foreign policy address at the State Department that addressed China, saying, “We will also directly confront China (the Chinese Communist Party), our most serious competitor that poses a challenge to our prosperity, security, and democratic values. We will confront China’s (CCP) economic ills, oppose its aggressive coercive actions, and push back against China’s (CCP) attacks on human rights, intellectual property and global governance, but we are willing to work with Beijing and it is in America’s interest to do so.”
He added that U.S. leadership must embrace a new era of authoritarianism, including China’s (CCP) ambition to compete with the United States and Russia’s determination to resolve American democracy.
The White House said Jan. 25 that the Chinese Communist Party poses a clear challenge to the U.S. and that the Biden administration is seeking a strategy of “strategic patience. In response, former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe countered that intelligence agencies are not suggesting that the United States should be patient with the Chinese Communist Party, but rather that it should act aggressively.
The Biden administration’s Commerce Secretary nominee angered Republicans by refusing to commit to keeping huawei on the Commerce Department’s “Entity List,” and on Feb. 3, Bloomberg reported that Commerce Secretary nominee Gina Raimondo said there was “no reason” why Chinese companies such as Huawei should not remain on the trade blacklist. “There is no reason why Chinese companies such as Huawei should not remain on the trade blacklist.
Biden administration Secretary of State Anthony Blinken told senators at the hearing that former President Trump was “right” to take a tougher stance on Beijing.
He said in an exclusive interview with CNN’s MSNBC on Feb. 1 that China (the Chinese Communist Party) poses “the most significant challenge” to the United States. Blinken also criticized Beijing for not being transparent enough with the international community on the virus outbreak. But he also said the U.S.-China relationship is a complex one, with aspects of confrontation and competition, as well as cooperation.
The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday (Feb. 3) that Biden’s China policy is dominated by dissident team members, and how they work together could determine whether the new administration will have a unified policy toward China or one that is fraught with disagreement and easily exploited by Beijing.
The National Security Council, the main body of the Biden administration, includes former Secretary of State John Kerry and Kurt Campbell, the White House’s China coordinator, both of whom have very different perceptions of China.
As Biden’s climate envoy, Kerry is pushing for an international climate agreement that advocates cooperation with China, the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases. Meanwhile, Campbell, Biden’s appointed China coordinator, wants to push back hard against China (the Chinese Communist Party).
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