Pompeo: The ‘True Face’ of the CCP Has Been Exposed

[IceWizard]

Pompeo:
The ‘True Face’ of the
CCP Has Been Exposed






BY SAMUEL ALLEGRI AND JAN JEKIELEK
January 4, 2021
Updated: January 5, 2021



In an interview with The Epoch Times’ “American Thought Leaders”
program, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo elucidated on the Trump
administration’s efforts to reconnect modern America to its founding
origins based on God-given rights and described the present
administration’s foreign policy of keeping America safe from the
worldwide threat of communism.

At the outset of the interview, host Jan Jekielek asked Pompeo why it
took so long for the United States to sanction the Chinese Communist Party
for gross human rights violations against practitioners of the meditation
group Falun Gong.

“You go back all the way to Tiananmen Square. We’ve known the
nature of this regime, and frankly, freedom-loving people across
the world who have known the nature of authoritarian regimes
throughout history. And yet we ignored it,” Pompeo answered.

Pompeo explained that the reason for the disregard of the CCP’s
(Chinese Communist Party) grave human rights violations was a
great extent due to the existence of a belief that if the United States
engaged in fair and reciprocal trade and engagement, the situation
would ameliorate. However, reality showed that the idea was clearly
“false all the way through.”




Secretary of State Mike Pompeo at the State Department
in Washington on Jan. 4, 2021.
(Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)



He continued to answer by saying that President Donald Trump understood
the failure of that engagement policy from the outset and changed
the American stance fundamentally, adding that it was not just the
United States that has changed its view of China, but the whole West.

“Even when you look at Europe and Australia and Southeast Asia,
they know to, they know that the Chinese Communist Party is
up to no good.”

Pompeo added that while dissidents were warning about CCP wrongdoing,
the United States was involved in very serious counterterrorism operations
and the focus was taken off the CCP.

“We took our eye off this enormous threat and now it’s now upon us.
It’s now inside the gates, the Chinese Communist Party is here in America,
and the Trump administration has begun in every dimension to turn
the ship in the right direction, to get America to once again do the
right thing and protect itself from this communist threat in China.”

Pompeo was then asked why he has been more focused on religious
freedom than any other secretary of state.

“It’s at the center of every civilization, this idea that human beings
have inherent dignity because of their humanness. And if you get that
piece wrong, bad things flow from that.”

Pompeo said that under Trump’s leadership, they have focused on
religious freedom not just in China but particularly with the CCP.

“We’ve seen what they’re doing to the Uyghurs in the western part
of the country. We’ve seen what they’ve done to Tibetans. We now
see them doing the same thing to other ethnic minorities, including
the people in Mongolia and the north part of China. And then Christians
throughout the entire country,” Pompeo said.

“These things that are fundamental affronts to human dignity are
something that is a hallmark of authoritarian regimes and
General Secretary Xi Jinping is no different. He knows that he has
to extend ever-increasing power and control in order to maintain
his capacity to rule. And that shuts out the important space that
religious freedom should have for every human being in the world,”
he continued.




Screens that read 5G Clean Path with a map of the United States
are visible behind Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, accompanied
by State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus (L), as he
speaks at a news conference at the State Department in
Washington, on April 29, 2020.
(Andrew Harnik/AFP via Getty Images)



Pompeo said the administration has done their best to shine a light on
these violations and is confident that: “The world will keep up this drumbeat,
demanding simply that the Chinese Communist Party permit people to
exercise their God-given rights to practice, and not practice their faith
in the way that they so choose.”

He explained why he has emphasized a clear difference between the
Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese people, explaining that the
people who live there are good but are sadly “under the jackboot of an
authoritarian regime.”

“Chinese people who live all across the world, including here in the
United States of America, we want to honor them, and we admire them.
And we hope that they too will join the call to change the nature of
how this regime behaves in its international activities,” Pompeo said.

“I’m confident that this pressure that is now on the Chinese Communist Party
is real. And not just because leaders are demanding it, because people
all across the world can see it, the true face of the Chinese Communist Party
has been exposed.”

Trading with China fairly or having Chinese students in the United States
isn’t a problem, he said, as long as they don’t break rules that would
compromise American security or freedom.

“Every experience I’ve had, in my six years as a member of Congress, and
now four years serving in the Trump administration, would suggest that
anything but distrusting anything that comes from the Chinese Communist Party
is folly,” Pompeo stated. “They’ve broken promise after promise after promise.”

At the last section of the interview, he was asked about the importance
of the Commission on Unalienable Rights (pdf).