Pompeo says Trump to act on Chinese students

WASHINGTON: The United States will take action to prevent alleged espionage by Chinese students, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said ahead of an expected announcement by President Donald Trump on Friday.

Trump said that he will hold a press conference on Friday about China amid soaring tensions between the two powers, including over the status of Hong Kong and the novel coronavirus pandemic.

Asked about a report in The New York Times that Trump was considering throwing out thousands of graduate students, Pompeo said Thursday that Chinese students "shouldn’t be here in our schools spying."

"We know we have this challenge. President Trump, I am confident, is going to take that on," Pompeo told Fox News, while declining to say if action would be announced on Friday.

"We have an obligation -- a duty -- to make sure that students that are coming here to study... aren’t acting on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party," Pompeo said.

The New York Times said that the Trump administration was considering annuling visas for thousands of graduate students linked to China’s military.

The move would be certain to draw criticism from universities, which rely increasingly on tuition from foreign students -- of which China and India are the largest sources -- and have already been hit hard by the Covid-19 shutdown.

Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said Friday that the US "has a lot of negative words and deeds which are totally against the ideals of openness and freedom that they claim to be the champion of."

Zhao said the US actions have already brought "serious negative impact on the normal people-to-people exchanges... and seriously undermines the social basis of the relations between the two countries."

Asian American activists have long voiced concern that the targeting of Chinese students impacts their own community, with US citizens of Asian ancestry coming under unjustified suspicion.

"This isn’t a red scare, this isn’t racist. Chinese people are a great people," Pompeo said when asked about the concerns.

"This is like the days of the Soviet Union. This is a communist, tyrannical regime that poses real risk to the United States," he said.

Trump, in remarks to reporters, declined to preview the press conference on Friday but said, "We’re not happy with China." The press conference will come two days after Pompeo certified to Congress that Hong Kong was no longer autonomous from China, as promised by Beijing before Britain handed over its colony in 1997.