China poses greatest challenge to US
WASHINGTON: Even as the United States and China seek to resolve escalating trade tensions, US secretary of state Mike Pompeo has called China the “greatest challenge” facing his country; bigger than Russia or Iran.
“Over the five, 10, 25-year time horizon, just by simple demographics and wealth, as well as by the internal system in that country, China presents the greatest challenge that the US will face in the medium to long term,” Pompeo said in an interview to a radio host Monday.
Interviewer Hugh Hewitt asked Pompeo if he considered China the “greatest threat” to the west. He asked if the threat was bigger than Russia, which has inherited and embraced all of Soviet Union’s hostility for the west and Iran, which has been hit with unprecedented sanctions by President Donald Trump’s administration. “I don’t think there’s any doubt about that,” Pompeo said.
The remarks came at a crucial time in relations between the world’s largest and second largest economies.
They are negotiating an improbable trade deal, weighed down by exaggerated expectations and promises, under the cover of temporary truce agreed upon by President Trump and President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Buenos Aires, Argentina earlier this month.
Pompeo’s remarks also came just weeks after a scathing attack by Vice-president Mike Pence against China in which he had accused the country of “employing a whole-of-government approach, using political, economic, and military tools, as well as propaganda, to advance its influence and benefit its interests in the United States”.
Even as President Trump sought to portray a sense of easy camaraderie with President Xi, having hosted him at his Florida resort and through regular shoutouts in remarks in relations to their ongoing trade negotiations and the peace initiative for the Korean peninsula, bilateral ties have been on a downward spiral, specially this year.
“2018 could go down in history as the year China lost the United States,” a senior administration official dealing with China told a western diplomat recently.
Pence’s speech in October had received little or no attention in the US drowned out by midterm elections even though experts said it was meant for the domestic audience in view of the polls. But Beijing and diplomats around the world took note.