Free world must change China or China will change us: Pompeo

Washington: US secretary of state Mike Pompeo has called on “free nations” to triumph over the threat of what he said was a “new tyranny” from China, in a provocative speech likely to worsen fraught US-China relations.

“Today China is increasingly authoritarian at home, and more aggressive in its hostility to freedom everywhere else,” Pompeo said in a speech on Thursday at the Richard Nixon presidential library in Yorba Linda, California.

“If the free world doesn’t change Communist China, Communist China will change us,” he said, Pompeo said Nixon’s worry about what he had done by opening the world to China’s Communist party in the 1970s had been prophetic.

“President Nixon once said he feared he had created a ‘Frankenstein’ by opening the world to the CCP,” Pompeo said. “And here we are.”

Pompeo’s remarks come as rivalry between the US and China has deteriorated sharply over the last few weeks. On Friday, Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying described Pompeo as an “ant trying to shake a tree” in a “futile” attempt to “launch a new crusade against China.”

On Friday, the ministry announced that it had ordered the US consulate in Chengdu in southwestern China to close, in response to the US shuttering a Chinese mission Houston earlier this week.

On Thursday, the US justice department charged four Chinese researchers with visa fraud, alleging they lied about their ties to China’s military, the People’s Liberation Army. Three have been arrested and one has taken refuge in the San Francisco consulate.

The department said the four were part of a Chinese effort to “infiltrate” US institutions to gain scientific and technological knowledge.

Assistant attorney general John Demers said: “This is another part of the Chinese Communist party’s plan to take advantage of our open society and exploit academic institutions.”

All four face up to 10 years in prison and $250,000 fines if found guilty.

Beijing earlier condemned reports of the charges as “naked political persecution”.

The US government “has continually monitored, harassed and even arbitrarily detained Chinese students and scholars in the US, and accused Chinese scholars on the presumption of guilt,” foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said. “China will take necessary measures to safeguard Chinese citizens’ safety and legitimate rights.”

Pompeo, in strident language that recalled the cold war, said Beijing had taken selfish advantage of US and western generosity as it implemented reforms and joined the global economy in the past four decades.

He strongly criticised previous US administrations for being too complacent with China, and US companies for being too compliant with whatever Beijing demanded of them.

He said Beijing had broken international commitments on Hong Kong’s autonomy, on the South China Sea and on stopping state-backed intellectual property threats.

“There can be no return to past practices just because they’re comfortable, or convenient,” he said. “We can no longer ignore the fundamental political and ideological differences between our countries, just as the CCP [Chinese Communist party] has never ignored them,” he said.

Pompeo said Washington had ordered China to close its consulate in Houston, Texas, this week because it had become a centre for espionage and operations to illegally obtain US companies’ trade secrets.

“This week we closed down China’s consulate in Houston because it was a hub of spying and IP theft,” he said. “China ripped off our prized intellectual property and trade secrets costing millions of jobs across America.”