Outraging Beijing, Pompeo pushes US hard line over virus
WASHINGTON: Branded “insane” by Chinese state media but hailed by US conservatives, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is taking the lead in pressing a hard line against Beijing over the coronavirus pandemic. Pompeo has been at the forefront of bringing into the mainstream a theory that the illness that has killed nearly 250,000 worldwide slipped out of a virology laboratory in the Chinese city of Wuhan, where the virus first emerged last year.
The hawkish role is familiar for Pompeo, who has also advocated sweeping pressure on Iran including a January drone strike that killed one of its top generals. The former Army infantryman has for months been describing China as a major adversary on everything from technology to defense-a contrast with President Donald Trump, who has abruptly swung from assailing to praising Beijing.
Yet Pompeo has also managed a rare feat in Trump’s Washington-staying in the good graces of the mercurial president, who is not known to have uttered a critical word against his top aide. Washington watchers see loyalty to Trump as the ultimate principle of Pompeo, whose own political future is tied to sticking by Trump and helping him win re-election in November.
A former congressman, Pompeo has been unabashedly partisan as compared with past US top diplomats, recently criticizing Trump’s presumptive Democratic presidential rival Joe Biden by name at a State Department news conference. Douglas Paal, a senior Asia adviser under previous Republican presidents, said that Pompeo’s focus on China’s role in the pandemic was in line with Trump’s re-election strategy.
“The economy has cratered, the stock market has cratered, so what else do you run on in the election? Well, run against China,” said Paal, a scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He said that Pompeo, who has only made two brief visits to Beijing since taking office two years ago, takes a more ideological approach to China than previous secretaries of state. “Every time, it’s never the ‘Chinese government.’ It’s always the ‘Chinese Communist Party.’ That terminology seems to explain to them everything about what China is doing,” he said.