Mike Pompeo says Xi Jinping 'most unpleasant' leader he met as US Secretary | World News - Hindustan Times
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Mike Pompeo says Xi Jinping 'most unpleasant' leader he met as US Secretary

Jan 30, 2023 01:41 PM IST

Mike Pompeo On Xi Jinping: “I also found Xi a quintessential Communist apparatchik: heavy in the abstract, light on the issues under discussion," Mike Pompeo said.

Former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that among the dozens of world leaders he met when he was in the position he found Chinese President Xi Jinping the "most unpleasant". In his book titled 'Never Give an Inch: Fighting for the America I Love,' Mike Pompeo writes that he held multiple interactions with Xi Jinping and found him "dour" and a "quintessential Communist apparatchik".

File photo of Chinese President Xi Jinping.
File photo of Chinese President Xi Jinping.

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During the interactions Xi Jinping told stories about Chinese victimhood and talked about his "demands to avenge grievances from long before any of us were born”, Mike Pompeo noted.

"Personally, I thought Xi was dour. While Putin can be funny and mirthful, even while being evil, Xi was not so serious as dead-eyed. I never once saw an unforced smile,” Mike Pompeo writes in the book.

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“I also found Xi a quintessential Communist apparatchik: heavy in the abstract, light on the issues under discussion, and always eager to impose his views, even while he pretends to be listening to you. He fit the psychological profile of an East German or Soviet Communist I came to study during my Army days,” he added.

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“My China policy advisor at the State Department, Miles Yu, later told me that CCP leaders in general, and General Secretary Xi in particular, deploy overwrought erudition to play gullible American leaders,” he further said, adding, “Of the dozens of world leaders I met, he was among the most unpleasant. How’s that for telling the hard truth? Having now seen the regime personified at the highest level, I was gripped by just how different its leaders were from the Chinese people.”

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