Pompeo urges Chinese people to repudiate CCP

FPI / July 24, 2020

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is urging America's allies and China's citizens to work with the United States to change the "bankrupt totalitarian ideology" of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

The CCP “fears the Chinese people’s honest opinions more than any foreign foe,” Pompeo plans to say in a speech at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum, according to a draft of the speech obtained by the Wall Street Journal.

The U.S. “must also engage and empower the Chinese people,” Pompeo said.

Related: Pompeo expands on Trump’s new tough policy on China, July 21, 2020

In the draft speech, Pompeo urges like-minded countries to exert coordinated pressure on the CCP.

“We, the free nations of the world, must induce change in the CCP’s behavior in more creative and assertive ways, because Beijing’s actions threaten our people and our prosperity,” he plans to say. “The Politburo can’t be sweet-talked into change.”

While stopping short of calling for regime change, Pompeo said Chinese supreme leader Xi Jinping is a “true believer in a bankrupt totalitarian ideology.”

The Journal noted that Pompeo's speech, called “Communist China and the Free World’s Future,” caps a series of addresses by senior officials in recent weeks which focus on “what the Trump administration sees as the challenge posed by China and its expanding global reach.”

President Donald Trump has turned up the pressure on Beijing with sanctions against CCP officials and military exercises in the South China Sea.

This week, the Trump administration took the unprecedented move of ordering China to close its consulate in Houston, accusing it and other Chinese diplomatic missions of economic espionage and visa fraud.

Pompeo, in an interview ahead of the speech, said the action was necessary for national security and to prevent the theft of intellectual property from sensitive energy and health-care businesses in the Houston area.

“Look, the American people are not going to allow our economic work, our talent to be stolen by the Chinese Communist Party,” Pompeo said.

‘Diplomats’ spotted burning documents in barrels outside Houston consulate

Ordered by the Trump administration to close their consulate in Houston within 72 hours, Chinese diplomats were frantically burning documents in open metal barrels on the facility’s grounds while keeping local firefighters at bay, according to a July 22 report by The Washington Times.

The destruction of confidential documents at a facility ordered or forced to close on short notice is not unusual. In 2017, the Russian Consulate in San Francisco made news for burning large amounts of material when it was ordered closed.

State Department officials said the Houston consulate was ordered to close after a top diplomat used a fake ID to evade security and escort Chinese travelers onto a charter flight at George Bush Intercontinental Airport.

U.S. authorities said the suspected espionage focused not just on security and military targets, but increasingly on what private American firms are studying in the race to stop the coronavirus.

China’s Houston consulate “is a massive spy center, forcing it to close is long overdue,” said a Twitter post from Sen. Marco Rubio, Florida Republican and acting chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Rubio said the Houston consulate was a “central node” of the Chinese Communist Party’s spy operations.

The Washington Times reported that it was not clear whether the closure order for the consulate was coordinated with the Department of Justice’s unsealing of an indictment Tuesday accusing two Chinese hackers of trying to steal pharmaceutical secrets from U.S. companies researching vaccines and treatments for COVID-19.

Federal prosecutors said the hackers acted at times in conjunction with the Chinese Ministry of State Security but operated from China, not a Chinese government post inside the United States.

Free Press International