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Pence paints China as enemy in US election
WASHINGTON, Oct 5, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – Vice President Mike Pence on Thursday
accused China of military aggression, commercial theft and rising human
rights violations as he cast the Asian power as a villain bent on interfering
in upcoming US elections.
In a blistering speech that expands on complaints aired by President Donald
Trump at the United Nations last week, Pence accused China of waging an
“unprecedented effort to influence American public opinion” ahead of critical
congressional elections on November 6.
“To put it bluntly, President Trump’s leadership is working; China wants a
different American president,” Pence said at the Hudson Institute, a
conservative Washington think tank.
“There can be no doubt — China is meddling in America’s democracy.”
China hit back furiously on Friday, branding Pence’s accusation as
“ridiculous,” groundless and slanderous.
The administration’s offensive on China comes as a cloud hangs over Trump
with an investigation into whether his campaign colluded with Russia to swing
the 2016 presidential election in the Republican real estate tycoon’s favor.
Just hours before Pence spoke, the US Justice Department indicted seven
Russian intelligence agents as part of a joint crackdown with Britain and The
Netherlands on alleged hacking by Moscow, including against the Democratic
Party, Trump’s domestic rivals.
But Pence said: “As a senior career member of our intelligence community
told me just this week, what the Russians are doing pales in comparison to
what China is doing across this country.”
– Rising disputes –
Pence’s sharply worded address comes days before Secretary of State Mike
Pompeo is due to visit China on a trip focused on nuclear diplomacy with
North Korea — an area in which the United States still seeks Beijing’s
cooperation.
China has maintained a calm tone as US language escalates. China’s
ambassador to the US Cui Tiankai, in an interview with National Public Radio
aired shortly before Pence’s address, said there was a “much larger need for
cooperation” than competition with Washington.
Relations between the world’s two largest economies have plummeted in
recent weeks with Trump placing $250 billion in tariffs on Chinese goods, in
part over charges that Beijing forces US companies to hand over technological
know-how.
Larry Kudlow, the director of the White House’s National Economic Council,
separately said that the United States was speaking to the European Union and
Japan about taking joint action against China.
Speaking before the Economic Club of Washington, Kudlow — using language
with echoes of the Iraq war — spoke of a “trade coalition of the willing to
confront China.”
Pence lashed out at China for focusing its retaliatory tariffs on states
vital to the Republicans’ electoral chances.
He also slammed Beijing for placing a multi-page advertisement extolling
the virtues of US-China trade in the Des Moines Register, the highest-
circulation newspaper in Iowa, a swing state whose longtime governor Terry
Branstad is Trump’s ambassador to Beijing.
Such paid supplements by foreign governments are commonplace in US
newspapers, but Pence complained that the United States was not allowed to
print similar advertisements in China’s state-controlled press.
Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said the US charges were
“nothing but speaking on hearsay evidence, confusing right and wrong and
creating something out of thin air.”
She said China was a “builder of world peace” with no interest in meddling
in US elections.
“It is very ridiculous for the US side to stigmatize its normal exchanges
and cooperation with China as China interfering in its internal affairs and
elections,” Hua said.
“The international community has already known fully well who wantonly
infringes upon others’ sovereignty, interferes in others’ internal affairs
and undermines others’ interests.”
– Hailing Taiwan as model –
Touching a particularly sensitive issue for China, Pence attacked Beijing
for coaxing three more Latin American nations to switch recognition from
Taiwan.
“These actions threaten the stability of the Taiwan Strait — and the
United States of America condemns them,” Pence said.
The democratic, self-governing island is home to nationalists who fled in
1949 after losing China’s civil war and has waged an increasingly lonely
campaign for diplomatic recognition as the Republic of China.
Pence made clear that the United States still adhered to its four-decade
policy of recognizing only Beijing but added to applause: “Let me also say
that Taiwan’s embrace of democracy shows a better path for all the Chinese
people.”
Pence also accused Beijing of showing its “aggression” when a Chinese navy
vessel recently sailed in the dispute-ridden South China Sea near the USS
Decatur destroyer, which according to US officials had to make a quick detour
to avoid collision.
“Despite such reckless harassment, the United States Navy will continue to
fly, sail and operate wherever international law allows and our national
interests demand,” Pence said.
“We will not be intimidated; we will not stand down.”
The vice president, a favorite of conservative US Christians, also
criticized China on human rights, voicing disappointment that rising
prosperity has not led to reforms.
China “has taken a sharp U-turn toward control and oppression,” Pence said,
adding: “A new wave of persecution is crashing down on Chinese Christians,
Buddhists and Muslims.”
BSS/AFP/MRI/0905 hrs