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Pompeo says China ‘rogue actor’ in region
Washington: US Secretary of State Michael Pompeo has blamed China for escalating tensions along the border with India and called it a “rogue actor” in the neighbourhood,
Washington: US Secretary of State Michael Pompeo has blamed China for escalating tensions along the border with India and called it a “rogue actor” in the neighbourhood, and indicated he may have raised the dispute and other such flashpoints in his meeting with his Chinese counterpart, Yang Jiechi, earlier in the week.
“The PLA has escalated border tensions – we see it today in India, the world’s most popular – populous democracy,” Pompeo said referring to the People’s Liberation Army, the Chinese military. “And we watch as it militarises the South China Sea and illegally claims more territory there, threatening vital sea lanes, a promise they broke again”
“But the CCP isn’t just a rogue actor in its own neighbourhood,” he added, referring this time to the Chinese Communist Party by its initials. “If it was, we might think differently about it. It impacts us all. “
The top US diplomat was participating in a virtual conference of the Copenhagen Democracy Summit on Friday.
Pompeo went on to say, in response to a question about his meeting with Yang, “What I spent a good deal of my time speaking with Yang Jiechi about was the fundamental idea that we’re just watching actions. It’s no longer enough to listen to what the Chinese Communist Party is saying. We can see their actions. I ticked through a few of them: Hong Kong, Tibet, Xinjiang, what they’re doing in India, what they’ve done in the economic zones along the Philippines and Malaysia and Indonesia and Vietnam, the coercion on Australia – when they had the audacity to demand that there would be an investigation of how this virus got from Wuhan to Milan, how this virus got from Wuhan to Tehran, how this virus got from Wuhan to Oklahoma City, and to Belgium and to Spain, and decimating the global economy.”
The readout issued of the meeting by the state department had did not have such granular details. But, again, it was not explicit from Pompeo’s remarks at the virtual conference if he did indeed bring up the India-China border clashes specifically or in a general way, covering all of China’s aggressive actions.
Tensions between the United States and China have escalated significantly after the Covid-19 outbreak,. The Trump administration has sought to tie to China accusing it of not alerting the rest of the world on time and then by providing incorrect and misleading information about it. Pompeo calls it the Wuhan Virus, after the city where it started. And President Donald Trump had called the “Chinese Virus”, “plague” and “gift” from China.
There is very little patience for China in the United States, which made very clear its support for India in the ongoing border dispute with India form the early days. In May, Alice Wells, the former top diplomat for South and Central Asia had said the border flare-ups “were reminder that Chinese aggression is not always just rhetorical. We continue to see provocations and disturbing behaviour by China that raises questions about how China wants to use its rising power”.
President Trump had offered to mediate subsequently, late May, but was turned down by both India and China.
