© Reuters / Andy WongChina's Foreign Minister Wang Yi with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo
Washington is pressuring Beijing to act like a "normal nation" on the world stage, Mike Pompeo has repeated, accusing China, ironically, of disregarding international laws and seeking to impose "decades of pain" around the globe.
"
We're very worried that China will put the people in many countries around the world, in Africa and Central America and Latin America, in a debt trap that will cause those countries decades of pain," the Secretary of State
said on the Laura Ingraham Show, stressing that Donald Trump's administration is the first one to recognize the danger, one which it is more-than-willing to tackle.
"China is probably, over the long term, the biggest challenge, national security challenge that faces our country."
For the US, among the biggest threats posed by China is the theft of intellectual property, which Trump has vowed to root out, Pompeo reiterated. Conveniently
unsealed on Tuesday, charges by the Justice Department against a group of Chinese intelligence officers who allegedly tried to steal US aviation secrets is the latest "mosaic of our strategic effort" to push back against Beijing, the diplomat noted.
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