© Yara Nardi | Reuters
"The truth is that our policies, and those of other free nations, resurrected China's failing economy, only to see Beijing bite the international hands that fed it," Pompeo told an audience at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library in Yorba Linda, California.
The crumbling relationship between Washington and Beijing, strained from an ongoing trade battle, has intensified as the Trump administration places blame squarely on China for the coronavirus pandemic and its devastation on the global economy.
This week, in another sign of escalating tension, the U.S. government ordered the closure of the Chinese consulate in Houston. Beijing vowed to retaliate.
"We opened our arms to Chinese citizens, only to see the CCP exploit our free and open society. It sent propagandists into our press conferences, our research centers, our high-school and college campuses," the nation's top diplomat said Thursday, adding that the Chinese government had also "ripped off our prized intellectual property" and "sucked supply chains away from America."
Pompeo then sharpened his focus to Chinese telecom giant Huawei, a firm that he has previously described as a "Trojan horse for Chinese intelligence."
"We have stopped pretending Huawei is an innocent telecommunications company ... we have called it what it is, a national security threat, and taken action accordingly," he said.
U.S. officials have long complained that Chinese intellectual property theft has cost the economy billions of dollars in revenue and thousands of jobs. They have also said that it threatens national security. Meanwhile, Beijing maintains that it does not engage in intellectual property theft.
Pompeo's remarks follow those of U.S. Attorney General William Barr, national security advisor Robert O'Brien and FBI Director Christopher Wray.
In a blistering speech last week, Barr accused the Chinese government of human rights abuses, espionage and economic blitzkrieg.
"The American people are more attuned than ever to the threat that the Chinese Communist Party poses not only to our way of life, but to our very lives and livelihoods," Barr said.
Comment: This is a bit over the top, even keeping the CCP's many flaws and possible agendas in mind.
Last month, O'Brien slammed China for a laundry list of offenses before saying that "the days of American passivity and naivety regarding the People's Republic of China are over."
Similarly, Wray said the Trump administration would not allow the Chinese to carry on with espionage and cyberattacks against the United States which has amounted to what he called "one of the largest transfers of wealth in human history."
Comment: It's hard to take Pompeo seriously, knowing that the United States engages in pretty much the same types of behavior. Maybe if he first acknowledged his own government's wrongdoings and did something about them, his criticisms of China would mean something. That's not to say there isn't plenty to criticize China about, but it would be nice having it come from someone with some actual integrity.