The high-level U.S.-China talks in Alaska on the 18th and 19th were once the focus of much attention. Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo warned the Biden administration to look beyond the talks and see the Chinese Communist Party‘s rhetoric for what it is. He also cautioned that the Communist Party was using the dialogue with the U.S. “as a delaying tactic.
Pompeo was interviewed by the National Review on March 18. He was asked about the high-level U.S.-China talks held that day in Alaska. Pompeo’s successor, new Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan met in Alaska with top Chinese diplomat Yang Jiechi and Foreign Minister Wang Yi.
During the meeting, the U.S. side raised the issues of Hong Kong and Taiwan and the Chinese Communist Party’s genocide in Xinjiang, to which Yang Jiechi immediately retorted that the U.S. was interfering in internal affairs.
No joint statement was issued at the end of the U.S.-China meeting on Friday (March 19); although both sides said the talks were useful, they remained on their own and did not even mention follow-up talks.
Senior U.S. officials ended the talks Friday by saying the meeting was useful, but did not say whether the two sides reached any specific agreements.
Sullivan said, “We will continue to work with the Chinese side and move forward.”
Pompeo, for his part, warned U.S. officials to be wary of the Chinese Communist Party’s all talk and no action. He told National Review that he has actually shared with the Biden Administration his previous experience meeting with Chinese Communist Party officials, and they have tried to accept it.
Pompeo warned the Biden administration that Chinese Communist Party officials “use dialogue as a delaying tactic. He also disclosed that his meeting with Yang Jiechi in Hawaii last year was at the request of the Chinese, and that when Chinese Communist Party officials showed up, they had no desire to change their behavior.
During the interview, Pompeo offered a simple exhortation to the Biden administration based on his experience with the CCP’s delaying tactics. “They (the CCP) are not slowing us down at all, and I hope that this administration will see the true nature of that talk (CCP) rhetoric and gauge how they (Biden administration officials) will respond to China (CCP), not with tough talk, but with their actions.”
In a March 18 interview with Newsmax News, Pompeo also cautioned U.S. officials who are in talks with the Chinese side to be wary of the CCP’s ill-intentioned use of delaying tactics to gain an advantage.
Pompeo also met with Yang Jiechi in June of last year. He referred to that meeting in his China-heavy speech last July. He said the Chinese side was doing the same old thing: talking a lot, but not actually offering to change its behavior. He said Yang Jiechi’s promises, like those made by many Chinese officials, were “hollow.
He also stressed at the Time that “my experience has led me to the central understanding that the only way to really change communist China is not based on what they say, but on how they [the CCP] act.”
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