US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Photo: IC

 

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, speaking on Friday at the Baker Institute for Public Policy at Rice University in Houston, reiterated that the US is confronting a "complex challenge" from the Communist Party of China (CPC). During a question-and-answer session, he accused the CPC of engaging in activities "deeply inconsistent" with "what America thinks is the best for the world." He also vilified China's many economic and foreign policies as "inconsistent with the way both any other country behaves and the way the WTO permits."

Pompeo also focused on the situation in Hong Kong, commenting on China's "one country, two systems" policy.

Whether it's slandering the CPC or attacking specific Chinese policies, Pompeo's  remarks — nothing new — have been heard over and over again. It's just that as US secretary of state he probably wants his old words to ferment at the expense of adding a new negative dimension to international relations.

To be fair, much of Pompeo's strong criticism of China has been snubbed around the world. His virulent attacks on the CPC, for example, have hardly been echoed by senior officials in other Western countries. The great achievements the CPC has made in governing China are universally recognized and are admired and envied particularly by developing countries. The CPC has a lot of contacts with political parties from all over the world, including Western countries. The "complex challenge" from the CPC that Pompeo referred to is a very weird and isolated feeling of some American political elites. It is they themselves who need to reflect.

Pompeo's other attacks on China have also struggled to find takers. For example, he used so-called loans to discredit China's loan assistance. He and his colleagues had previously made up a "debt trap" theory for loans by China. Yet Chinese loans are welcome in every country because they are purely unconditional in terms of meddling with the domestic affairs of the recipient country. 

Pompeo's remarks hurt the moral standards of the current US administration. He is fundamentally misleading American society. China's leap-forward progress is so obvious. Such a high-ranking official didn't objectively assess China's success, nor remind the American society to learn from China's positive experience and encourage  Americans to make greater efforts to strengthen themselves, he completely discredited the reality of China's vigorous development and insisted that modernization of the country as a whole was stolen from the US.

This ignores the inevitability of the Chinese people under the leadership of the CPC to make great achievements and comprehensive progress, and uses a big lie to shape the ideology of the US. People like Pompeo are driving American society to misjudge China and the world in the 21st century.

Confucius' saying is well known in China: in the company of three there must be my teacher. In recent years, China has humbly learned from the West and from neighboring countries, such as South Korea, which is much smaller than China but enjoys rapid economic and social development. We have also found strength in countries such as India and Vietnam that have lagged China in general but have grown rapidly in recent years. It can be said that the Chinese have been able to see the strengths of most countries. It is difficult to find any country that is good for nothing, and we do not think that any country deserves our systematic denial.

As America's top diplomat, Pompeo probably believes that lies told a thousand times become truth, so he spares no effort to repeat the platitudes against China and take the lies seriously. However, he is destined to go against the wind and sail, which is unbearable. Because it is for all to see what China is, what the CPC is. There is nothing in the world to say that teaching can be against the facts, and how can Pompeo expect to be the exception?