Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo criticized President Biden’s stance toward China, calling the policy shift from the Trump administration “disheartening.”
During an interview on Newsmax TV Saturday afternoon, the nation’s former top diplomat accused the current administration of failing to condemn the genocide of Uighur Muslims in China.
“This is some of the most horrific human activity that we have seen since the last century, and the administration has a responsibility … to convince the Chinese Communist Party not to behave in this way [and] to impose costs on them when they don’t,” Pompeo said. “So to pawn this off as just a different norm or a different set of behaviors, that’s what the Chinese Communist Party says. That’s how they talk about this.”
The former secretary of state said he was saddened by Biden downplaying China’s actions.
“To hear an American president talk about it in such a way that doesn’t connote all the seriousness with which this must be taken is disheartening, and I hope the administration will take it seriously in the same way that we did when we were in office,” he said.
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Pompeo’s remarks come in response to an answer the president gave during his CNN town hall on Feb. 16. When asked about the Uighur genocide, Biden alluded to cultural differences across the globe.
“The central principle of Xi Jinping is that there must be a united, tightly controlled China, and he uses his rationale for the things he does based on that. I point out to him no American president can be sustained as a president if he doesn’t reflect the values of the United States, and so the idea that I am not going to speak out against what he’s doing. … He said he gets it. Culturally, there are different norms that each country and their leaders are expected to follow.”
Despite the president’s remarks, Secretary of State Antony Blinken endorsed Pompeo’s approach to China’s genocide against Uighurs, saying he was “very much in agreement” with his predecessor on the issue.
“President Trump was right in taking a tougher approach to China,” he said on Jan. 19. “I disagree very much with the way he went about it in a number of areas, but the basic principle was the right one.”
Pompeo is not the only former Trump Cabinet official to criticize Biden’s handling of China in recent weeks. On Sunday, former Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette called Biden climate envoy John Kerry “misguided” to think he can set aside U.S.-China differences to battle climate change.
“China is going to play them,” he told the Washington Examiner.
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While Kerry has contended climate change can be a standalone area of negotiation, Brouillette argued the Chinese will take the situation for granted.
“They will agree to some 2060 target and have no intention of meeting any of it,” he said. “If they can get relief on the trade side and make some cockamamie commitment for 2060, they will do it. The Chinese are pretty sophisticated players and see through these comments [from Kerry].”
