Beijing likens Pompeo to a ‘mantis’ after latest US sanctions

HONG KONG: China yesterday likened outgoing Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to a “praying mantis” in a colorful condemnation of the latest US sanctions sparked by the mass arrest of Hong Kong pro-democracy activists. Pompeo, one of the Trump administration’s most vociferous China hawks, has spent his final days in office unveiling a host of measures targeting Beijing ahead of Wednesday’s inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden. Among them was fresh sanctions on six officials-including Hong Kong’s sole representative to China’s top lawmaking body-in response to the recent arrest of 55 democracy activists under a new security law.

“Hong Kong’s development from chaos to stability is unstoppable,” Beijing’s Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office said in its first response to the sanctions yesterday. “People like Pompeo are nothing but laughable praying mantises who are trying in vain to stop the rolling wheels of history.” The metaphor stems from an old Chinese idiom that describes futility in which a mantis tries to stop a chariot with its legs. Dismissing US sanctions as “a political trick when all other tricks are exhausted”, the office urged Pompeo to “wind up the show”-a reference to his impending departure from office.

On Saturday the Hong Kong government slammed the sanctions as “insane, shameless and despicable”one of a host of recent statements from the business hub’s authorities that channel the rhetoric used by the authoritarian mainland. Hong Kong was convulsed by seven months of huge and often violent democracy protests in 2019. China dismissed the protests and has since overseen a widespread crackdown in the financial hub, including imposing a draconian security law last year that criminalizes much dissent. —AFP