The people of China are rejecting the "authoritarian regime" of the ruling Communist Party that "denies basic freedoms to its people," Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said this week.
In an interview with The Washington Times released Thursday, Pompeo touted the Trump administration's progress in raising support for Israel and putting pressure on Iran.
"We also made real progress this year in informing the world of the threat posed by the Chinese Communist Party," he added. "We were asleep at the switch for a couple of decades as this threat continued to grow, and I think President Trump set the conditions where we could go speak around the world and talk to our colleagues around the world to demonstrate to them that — while there's enormous opportunity to sell goods in China and to create good things for the Chinese people — that the Chinese Communist Party presents real risks, and to begin to think materially, concretely, substantively about how to respond to it."
The former congressman from Kansas went on to say that the party "is an authoritarian regime and a combination of Marxist-Leninist ideology and Han Chinese nationalism" that "denies basic freedoms to its people — whether it's the egregious activities that take place in Xinjiang, or the Chinese Communist Party's failure and rejection to live up to their commitments in Hong Kong."
Pompeo concluded, "It's important that the United States recognize the greatness of the people of China and their capacity for desiring freedom and wanting nothing more than to live their lives, and the Chinese Communist Party that has a very different mission set."
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