NEW DELHI, June 20: US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Friday attacked China for its “rogue” attitude in its neighbourhood, specifically mentioning its recent border attacks against India.
Pompeo said that the PLA (People’s Liberation Army) has escalated border tensions with India, the world’s most populous democracy.
Adding that the country is also militarising the South China Sea and illegally claiming more territory there, threatening vital sea plan.
Pompeo made the remarks during an online conference on democracy in Copenhagen, Denmark.
Pompeo was careful to focus his criticism on the Chinese Communist Party but unusually cited Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, by name. “General Secretary Xi Jinping has green-lighted a brutal campaign of repression against Chinese Muslims, a human rights violation on a scale we haven’t seen since World War II. Now, the PLA has escalated border tensions with India,” he said.
Pompeo spoke a day after he expressed deep condolences to India on the death of 20 soldiers in violent clashes with Chinese troops at Galwan Valley in Ladakh on June 15.
Pompeo, who recently met Chinese Politburo member Yang Jiechi in Hawaii, said much of his conversation was about “the fundamental idea that we’re just watching [their] actions. It’s no longer enough to listen to what the Chinese Communist Party is saying. We can see their actions.” He ticked off a number 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.”
