Time to push back against China challenge: Pompeo

Washington, July 17: The time has come for the world to push back against the challenge posed by the Chinese Communist Party, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has said as he contended that the US “slept on this threat for too long.”

Pompeo also said the Chinese government was aware of human-to-human transmission of the Coronavirus before they shared this information with the world. “Countries not only in Southeast Asia but in Asia more broadly, in Europe, have come to understand the threat that the Chinese

Communist Party presents.

The United States slept on this for too long,” Pompeo said in an interview on Thursday. “I think they all did too, and I think they're coming to a joint conclusion that it’s time for the world to make sure that we get this right. “For democracies and freedom-loving people around the world, it is an imperative that we push back against the challenge that the Chinese Communist Party presents to us all,” Pompeo said.

He said that for 40 years, successive US administrations just looked the other way and allowed China to trample on America. President Donald Trump said “no more,” he said.

The US is going to have fair, reciprocal trade relationships; and it is going to demand that the Chinese Communist Party treat Americans the same way that the US treats people who go there, he said. Hemmer asked Pompeo to comment on claims by Hong Kong-based virologist Dr Yan Li-Meng, who recently fled to the United States, that Beijing knew that the virus could spread between humans three weeks before that knowledge was made public. — PTI