China will not be Affected by Pompeo’s ‘Angry’ Speech

The U.S. Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo’s, speech slamming China was an angry lament. It was an ideological rant that would not shake Beijing’s behavior. This was according to a former top American diplomat to Asia.

Furthermore, Pompeo’s apparent attempt to rally the Chinese people against the Communist Party of China is primitive and not effective. Daniel Russel was appointed assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific affairs by President Barack Obama. He worked in this position from 2013 to 2017. He made a statement that the speech would only boost the support for Chinese President Xi Jinping.

On Friday, he said that this kind of denunciation has the opposite impact in bolstering support in China for Xi Jinping and intensifying anger towards the United States.

Russel explained, “Complaining is not fixing and denouncing is not diplomacy.”

As of now, Daniel Russel is the vice president for international security and diplomacy at the Asia Society Policy Institute.

Change

Last Thursday, Pompeo revealed the sweeping address at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library. And he noted that the United States would no longer tolerate the Chinese playbook to usurp global order. They would call on their allies to induce Beijing to change. In addition to that, he called for the engagement and empowerment of the Chinese people.

Pompeo depicted the Chinese as a dynamic and freedom-loving people who are entirely distinct from the Chinese Communist Party.

Michael Hirson is Eurasia Group’s practice head for China and Northeast Asia. He explained that the Secretary of State’s remarks went as near as it could to call for a regime change in China. However, with the U.S. presidential election approaching, Chinese policymakers are unlikely to react in a sense that it would fundamentally change the two countries’ current relationship.

For Hirson, China is only absorbing all the bodily blows. After that, they will wait until the end of the election to decide where they take this relationship.

He added, “For the time being, they are watching it evolve and are not prepared to take drastic changes that would change the way that Beijing is dealing with this new challenge from the U.S.”

The Top Two Countries

The relationship between the U.S. and China has been its worst for decades. This is quite notable, as they are the two largest economies in the world. Besides the countries’ ongoing trade war, both sides have recently clashed over a range of issues, like the origin of coronavirus and China’s plan to implement a national security law in Hong Kong.

Russel mentioned that the ‘blame China’ and ‘get tough on China’ rhetoric in the U.S. indicates tension within the two countries could worsen.

He stated, “This is sort of an immovable object meeting an irresistible force, there’s a lot of friction and it’s unlikely to end well.”