Pompeo: Time for Free World to Stand Up to China and Change Its Behavior

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo delivered an address at the Richard M. Nixon Presidential Library in Yorba Linda, California in which he attacked the “old paradigm of blind engagement with China.”

“We must not continue it. We must not return to it,” he said.

Pompeo noted that he had chosen the Nixon Library as the site for his address because of Nixon’s role in reaching out to the People’s Republic of China nearly 50 years ago. Nixon’s hopes for China, Pompeo said, had not been fulfilled.

Worse, he said, China had exploited the U.S. and the rest of the world. “We opened our arms to Chinese citizens, only to see the CCP exploit our free and open society,” he said.

He added: “Hollywood – the epicenter of American creative freedom, and self-appointed arbiters of social justice – self-censors even the most mildly unfavorable reference to China.”

Pompeo also slammed China for taking over American supply chains, and using slave labor to produce exports to the world.

“Perhaps we were naïve about China’s virulent strain of Communism, or triumphalist after the Cold War, or cravenly capitalist, or hoodwinked by Beijing’s talk of a ‘peaceful rise,’” he said.

“Whatever the reason, today China is increasingly authoritarian at home, and more aggressive in its hostility to freedom abroad.”

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