FM pressers become forum to debunk Pompeo’s many lies
“for a national strategy to deal with China.”
A search for the members in the China Task Force revealed their antagonism toward China. One of them is Rep. Elise Stefanik, who in late April asked secretary of state and the attorney general to bring China to the International Court of Justice for the handling of COVID-19, according to a report by The Adirondack Daily Enterprise.
Analysts said setting up the new China committee is the Republicans’ new tactic to fuel antiChina sentiment, but this won’t help stop power from shifting from the West to East, which was happening before the pandemic. The pandemic is very likely to speed up this process.
Democrats not joining the committee does not mean they are more China-friendly, but they don’t want Republicans to shift the focus of President Donald Trump’s failure to handle the pandemic. Since last year, both parties passed several bills, interfering in China’s internal affairs, said Diao Daming, an associate professor at the Renmin University of China in Beijing.
Treating China as equals
In the past months, certain American politicians, including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, kept passing the buck, making groundless accusations that China was responsible for the outbreak, and hyped conspiracy theories by calling it the “China virus” to claim the virus originated from a Wuhan lab. At Friday’s media briefing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying joked that the press conference was almost all about refuting Pompeo’s lies.
Li Haidong, a professor at the Institute of International Relations of the China Foreign Affairs University, said the task force will fuel the existing unfriendly atmosphere toward China at the local level in the country.
Analysts warned that China needs to stay alert as the US is trying to create a new McCarthy era of international repression on China.
But, on the other hand, we should be aware that most countries won’t follow the US, Li said.
The US interception of other countries’ antivirus medical supplies and pointing a finger at the WHO when international cooperation is urgently needed occupied world headlines.
Meanwhile, the Chinese government had provided over 150 countries and international organizations with supplies, hosted over 120 video conferences with health experts from more than 160 members of the international community, according to Zhang Ming, Chinese Ambassador to the European Union.
Li said the rising hostility from some Western countries shows they are not accustomed to a rising China. He added that they need to learn to deal with other countries equally.
The task force on China is not the first one in the West. On April 24, several UK Conservative MPs launched a “China Research Group” to deal with the “rapidly changing nature of the relationship” between China and the UK.
However, Chris Wood, the British Consul General in Shanghai, told the Global Times that “We will see continued discussions and collaboration. There is no global challenge that can be solved without China’s participation. We recognize that we very much want to work with China on these big global issues, and that will continue.”