U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has spoken candidly with allied foreign ministers of India, Japan, and Australia on the importance of collaborating against threats posed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
Pompeo made his statement about the CCP during opening remarks for a “Quad” meeting with Japanese Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi, Indian Minister of External Affairs Dr. S. Jaishankar, and Australian Foreign Minister Marise Payne in Tokyo on October 6.
Pompeo: Protecting precious freedoms
During his remarks, Pompeo said that when the four ministers met last year “the landscape was very different,” referring to the world before COVID-19.
“We couldn’t have imagined the pandemic that came from Wuhan. That crisis was made infinitely worse by the Chinese Communist Party’s coverup. The regime’s authoritarian nature led its leaders to lock up and silence the very brave Chinese citizens who were raising the alarm,” Pompeo said.
“America stands with each of you as we work to achieve victory over this horrible pandemic and rebuild our economies together, and I’m looking forward to that part of our conversation today,” he said.
“I also look forward to resolving — to renewing our resolve to protect our precious freedoms and the sovereignty of the diverse nations of the region,” he said.
“As partners in this Quad, it is more critical now than ever that we collaborate to protect our people and partners from the CCP’s exploitation, corruption, and coercion. We’ve seen it in the south, in the East China Sea, the Mekong, the Himalayas, the Taiwan Straits. These are just a few examples,” he said.
U.S. Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo participated in a Quad meeting with Australian Foreign Minister Marise Payne, Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, Japanese Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi, and Indian External Affairs Minister Dr. Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, in Tokyo, Japan on October 6, 2020. (Image: State Department Photo by Ron Przysucha via Public Domain)
All of the Indo-Pacific nations have, individually or collectively, been dealing with an increasingly aggressive Beijing in 2020.
India had deadly clashes with the Chinese military on its Himalayan border while Japan has continued its long-running feud with Beijing over islands in the East China Sea.
Australia meanwhile has been bullied by the CCP after the country’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison called for an international inquiry into the origins of the new coronavirus. Several Australian citizens have also been held by Chinese authorities under charges of “subversion,” while journalists working for Australian media organizations have fled the country for their own safety.
For its part, Washington is in the middle of a trade war with Beijing amid growing antagonism further induced by the effects of the pandemic. The Trump administration is likewise confronting the CCP on a range of issues including espionage and intellectual property theft on U.S. soil. Meanwhile, Washington has shared international concerns over human rights abuses in China and Hong Kong. It has also increasingly warned Beijing over its militarization of the South China Sea and its threats toward self-governing Taiwan.
U.S. Secretary Mike Pompeo participates in a Quad meeting with the foreign ministers of Australia, Japan, and India in Tokyo, Japan on October 6, 2020. (Image: State Department Photo by Ron Przysucha via Public Domain)
Pompeo: World can longer ignore Chinese communism
Pompeo’s remarks in Tokyo follow a landmark speech he gave several months ago when he outlined Washington’s stance toward the CCP, which he described as a Marxist-Leninist regime whose leader, Xi Jinping, follows a bankrupt totalitarian ideology.
“It’s this ideology, it’s this ideology that informs his decades-long desire for the global hegemony of Chinese communism. America can no longer ignore the fundamental political and ideological differences between our countries, just as the CCP has never ignored them,” Pompeo said at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library in California on July 23.
You can watch that speech in full below:
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