Beijing slams Pompeo for ‘Cold War thinking’ in Berlin speech

BEIJING: China on Monday accused Mike Pompeo of “outdated Cold War thinking” after the US Secretary of State warned against a Chinese threat to Western freedoms.

Pompeo — who spoke in Germany on the eve of the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall — said the Chinese Communist Party “uses tactics and methods to suppress its own people that would be horrifyingly familiar to former East Germans”. He added that Washington has made clear to Beijing that they should “honour their commitment” to the “one country, two systems” policy that allows Hong Kong rights unseen in the mainland.

In response Beijing slammed Pompeo’s “baseless malicious attacks” on the Chinese government. Some figures in the US have “attempted to build an ideological wall between Chinese and foreign enterprises,” Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said Monday at a regular press briefing. Geng accused Pompeo of ignoring the interest of the American people to pursue personal political goals, and urged him to “abandon his ideological bias and outdated Cold War thinking”.