Chinese Communist Party officials are “paranoid” about their nation’s relationship with democratic countries, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo warned while calling for Europe to “awaken” to the threats from Beijing.
“It might be easy to dismiss the China challenge as just a passing irritant, but I hope you all know it is not so,” he told the Czech Senate on Wednesday. “The regime has a Marxist-Leninist core, no less than the Soviet Union did, and indeed perhaps more so. The party has always put itself first; its actions flow from its ideology. And it’s paranoid about free societies like ours.”
Pompeo visited the Czech Republic on the first leg of a trip that will include stops in Slovenia, Austria, and Poland. The diplomatic swing will complete a tour of the chief cities of the late Austro-Hungarian empire that Pompeo began in 2019. But whereas he sought to stunt the growth of Chinese influence in Budapest, his visit to Prague featured a warning other allies how “deeply communist [regimes] plunge societies into ruin and oppression.”
“We have to explain to our citizens the price free societies will pay if we don’t confront this threat,” he said. “We have to explain what kind of scrutiny we must give to Chinese investment and why we do that. We have to talk to them about what sorts of alliances are needed to be built between the United States and Europe and around the world.”
The speech builds on Pompeo’s increasingly explicit call for an international “coalition” to counter China, an effort that has accelerated due to revelations about the repression of Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang and Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s overt crackdown in Hong Kong. Czech officials have played a leading role in warning democratic nations to avoid partnering with Huawei, as the nation’s top cybersecurity agency identified the cutting-edge telecommunications company as a security threat two years ago.
The fallout from the coronavirus pandemic, especially China’s restrictions on the export of medical gear as the health crisis crescendoed in the West, has turned that suspicion of Chinese technology into a broader fear of overdependence on Chinese manufacturing in an array of industries. Still, even officials eager to turn those new perceptions into policies acknowledge it will be slow going.
“These are tectonic changes, so it will take ages to work on them,” a diplomatic source familiar with Pompeo’s visit said. “Maybe not ages, but there are no measures that can be adopted swiftly.”
Pompeo emphasized that Huawei has provided surveillance technology for the authorities in Xinjiang. “The idea of human rights and freedoms must be an integral part of any meaningful world order, my Czech friends, please remember that,” he said, quoting Czech dissident-turned-statesman Vaclav Havel. “And remember too that today, tomorrow, and forever, America will be with you as we champion those precious human rights and freedoms.”
