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Beijing slams Pompeo for ‘Cold War thinking’ in Berlin speech
BEIJING, Nov 11, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – China on Monday accused Mike Pompeo of
“outdated Cold War thinking” after the US Secretary of State warned against a
Chinese threat to Western freedoms.
Pompeo — who spoke in Germany on the eve of the 30th anniversary of the
fall of the Berlin Wall — said the Chinese Communist Party “uses tactics and
methods to suppress its own people that would be horrifyingly familiar to
former East Germans”.
He added that Washington has made clear to Beijing that they should
“honour their commitment” to the “one country, two systems” policy that
allows Hong Kong rights unseen in the mainland.
In response Beijing slammed Pompeo’s “baseless malicious attacks” on the
Chinese government.
Some figures in the US have “attempted to build an ideological wall
between Chinese and foreign enterprises,” Chinese foreign ministry spokesman
Geng Shuang said Monday at a regular press briefing.
Geng accused Pompeo of ignoring the interest of the American people to
pursue personal political goals, and urged him to “abandon his ideological
bias and outdated Cold War thinking”. Pompeo’s visit to Berlin came as
Germany prepared to mark three decades since November 9, 1989, when the
Berlin Wall came down, ultimately culminating in the collapse of the
communist regime in the east.
Pompeo said on Friday that the United States and its allies should “defend
what was so hard-won… in 1989” and “recognise we are in a competition of
values with unfree nations”.
His Berlin speech was the latest in a string of hawkish remarks on China
by the Secretary of State.
In October, Pompeo called Beijing “truly hostile” to the United States,
and vowed to ramp up pressure on China on multiple fronts.
BSS/AFP/FI/ 1659 hrs