{ "error": "", "type": "text", "title": "Secretary Pompeo With Bob Cusack, Editor-in-Chief of The Hill - China and North Korea", "slug": "secretary-pompeo-with-bob-cusack-editor-in-chief-of-the-hill-china-and-north-korea", "text": "
\"QUESTION:<\/strong> Thanks, Jimmy and Steve, and thank you, Mr. Secretary, for joining us. I want to jump into the news. Just recently, Mr. Secretary, you said that the U.S. may ban TikTok and other Chinese apps. Is there going to be a decision on that this summer?<\/p>\n SECRETARY POMPEO:<\/strong> Well, Bob, thanks. First of all, thanks for having me on here as well. Jimmy, thanks for that very, very generous introduction. Yeah, I made a comment about TikTok. We\u2019ve got to go back to first principles. The mission set is to protect American national security, and in this case, the information of American citizens. And so whether it\u2019s TikTok or any of the other Chinese communications platforms, apps, infrastructure, this administration has taken seriously the requirement to protect the American people from having their information end up in the hands of the Chinese Communist Party.<\/p>\n And so we are working through a process where all the relevant agencies and the private sector are getting to say their piece. We hope to have a set of decisions shortly which will reflect this central understanding. We\u2019ve been working on ZTE. We\u2019ve been working on Huawei. We\u2019re pleased to see the United Kingdom make its announcement that it\u2019s going to pull out Huawei technology from its telecom infrastructure. We\u2019ve watched telecom companies all across the world, from Orange and others, to say no, we understand. We want to make sure that our data flows only across trusted vendors. That\u2019s the mission set, and that\u2019s certainly the mission set when it comes to applications that our kids may be touching.<\/p>\n When I made those remarks (inaudible) I got lots of notes from mothers saying, \u201cPlease, please take it away, make it go away.\u201d That\u2019s for the parents to decide their kids\u2019 usage on their cell phones. It\u2019s our task to make sure that their children\u2019s information doesn\u2019t end up in the hands of the Chinese Communist Party. [...]<\/p> QUESTION:<\/strong> And if that were the case, what would be your second term agenda? What would be your \u2013 obviously you want to talk about what you\u2019ve done now, maybe the biggest thing since you joined State, but what would, going forward, you do in a second term?<\/p>\n SECRETARY POMPEO:<\/strong> We talked about the global mission set to secure American freedom. If you\u2019d asked me what the biggest challenge is going to be for the second term from a national security perspective, it\u2019s certainly going to be the Chinese Communist Party. It\u2019s something that we have been focused on since the beginning of the Trump administration. It\u2019s something that the previous administration allowed us to get just rolled by them in every dimension, whether it was intellectual property theft that they allowed to go on, whether it was the massively unfair trade relationship we had, whether it was China\u2019s advancement in the South China Sea. The previous administration simply refused to take the actions necessary to secure freedom for the American people from the threat that the Chinese Communist Party presents, and President Trump has told our team we need to do everything we can to preserve that freedom and push back to make sure we have a fair and reciprocal set of relationships with the Chinese Communist Party.<\/p>\n QUESTION:<\/strong> On China, it is a tense time with the South China Sea, Hong Kong, conflict there. What is the status of the U.S.-China relationship?<\/p>\n SECRETARY POMPEO:<\/strong> We\u2019re engaged in dialogue. I traveled to Honolulu now two, three weeks back to meet with Yang Jiechi. But sadly, they want to talk about cooperation, they want to talk about being a global power that complies with the rule of law, and yet everyplace we see their actions, their actions belie that. Examples: General Secretary Xi promised he would not militarize the South China Sea in 2015, in the Rose Garden. He militarized the South China Sea. They made a promise, a 50-year commitment, an internationally recognized agreement between China and the United Kingdom in Hong Kong, that there would be one country and two systems, and he\u2019s now fundamentally violated that.<\/p>\n Everyplace the Chinese Communist Party \u2013 they make commitments under the Paris Climate Accord that they\u2019re not remotely close to complying with. This is a Chinese Communist Party that is acting in a way that poses real threats to the world, and the United States is going to respond each \u2013 in each of those venues to make sure that we preserve American national security and impose costs on the Chinese Communist Party in order to achieve the change in behavior that will have a good outcome. So we want a free and open Indo-Pacific; the Chinese Communist Party continues to treat that body of water as its own maritime empire. We\u2019re not going to allow that to happen.<\/p>\n QUESTION:<\/strong> There is bipartisan legislation in the House and the Senate that would give certain Hong Kong residents refugee status. Is that legislation a good idea?<\/p>\n SECRETARY POMPEO:<\/strong> The President hasn\u2019t made a decision on this yet. I\u2019m very confident that if there are people who are coming from anywhere in the world who seek asylum, the United States has always been a place that welcomes those people. We \u2013 it\u2019s been a little bit slower, fewer people seeking asylum, and our capacity to process asylum claims has been a little slowed down by the virus that emanated from China. We\u2019ll be back at it shortly, and I\u2019m sure there\u2019ll be people from Hong Kong \u2013 the United Kingdom has graciously allowed some 3 million people to come from Hong Kong. Australia has set up a set of rules, Canada too. The Western world \u2013 democracies understand what the Chinese Communist Party is doing to those of us who believe in freedom and liberty, and we will make sure and take care of those freedom fighters who want to travel, who don\u2019t feel like they\u2019re safe, and can continue to do good work inside of Hong Kong or in any other country for that matter.<\/p>\n QUESTION:<\/strong> On the coronavirus, how sure are you that it originated from a lab in Wuhan, and what is the proof of that?<\/p>\n SECRETARY POMPEO:<\/strong> Yeah, so what I can say is that we know this much: We know that it began in Wuhan, China. The scientific community is quite confident of that. We don\u2019t know precisely from where it emanated. As I\u2019ve said before, there\u2019s evidence that it came from a laboratory. We\u2019ve seen other people who have said that it came from other places. And finally, we know this: The Chinese Communist Party has prevented anyone from finding out the answer to that question. They denied access to the laboratory, they\u2019ve \u2013 to the World Health Organization, anyone who wanted to talk about it who was inside of that laboratory, whether they were a journalist or a doctor, has been precluded from talking about that. They\u2019ve either been told they can\u2019t talk or worse. And indeed, the scientific community who desperately needs still to figure out where patient zero came from has been unable to get that information. This is a result of the Chinese Communist Party hiding the data.<\/p>\n Bob, you know this. Countries that want to be global powers, countries that want to participate on the global stage, have a corresponding obligation to comply to the promises they make. China made a promise to the World Health Organization. There\u2019s a set of rules about disclosure, and when you have an incident in your country that could potentially lead to a pandemic, you have an obligation to report that and to allow others to come in and help you be transparent about it. The Chinese Communist Party chose differently. They co-opted the World Health Organization to achieve that coverup, and the result today is that we have hundreds of thousands of people who have died and trillions of dollars in global damage as a direct result of the Chinese Communist Party\u2019s decision that resulted following their knowledge about what was happening in Wuhan.<\/p>\n QUESTION:<\/strong> Should China pay a price for that, financially or otherwise?<\/p>\n SECRETARY POMPEO:<\/strong> I think the world will absolutely make them pay a price. You can see it. Everyplace I go, every foreign minister that I talk to, they recognize what China has done to the world, and I\u2019m very confident that they will \u2013 that the world will look at China differently and engage with them on fundamentally different terms than they did before this catastrophic disaster that could well have been mitigated had China behaved in a way that was consistent with the promises that they had made. [...]<\/p> QUESTION:<\/strong> This year, will there be another North Korea summit? And what have the prior ones accomplished?<\/p>\n SECRETARY POMPEO:<\/strong> Well, we\u2019re getting pretty close to the election. The North Koreans have given mixed signals, but the truth is President Trump only wants to engage in a summit if we believe there\u2019s a sufficient likelihood that we can make real progress in achieving the outcomes that were set forth in Singapore now, goodness, a couple years back.<\/p>\n We\u2019re trying to have informed discussions with the North Koreans. We believe that denuclearization of the peninsula and, ultimately, resolution of the conflict there is important. And stability on that peninsula is incredibly important, but you need to have a willing partner, and the North Koreans have chosen at this point in time not to engage in a way that can lead to a potential solution. We hope they\u2019ll change their mind. We look forward to engaging them in dialogue so that we can get to the right outcome, and so do our partners in the region \u2013 the Japanese, the South Koreans, they all want to achieve this. The Chinese too make it very clear their expectation that North Korea will denuclearize. We need to do that and we need to do so in a way that is completely verifiable.<\/p>\n We still continue that mission. We\u2019ve avoided having a long-range missile fired. We\u2019ve avoided nuclear testing. Now it\u2019s time to get to the harder problems and secure a better outcome not only for the security of the American people, but for the people of North Korea as well. [...]<\/p> QUESTION:<\/strong> The UK reversed itself on Huawei and 5G. What \u2013 was that an intense lobbying campaign that you and others in the U.S. Government did to get them to reverse?<\/p>\n SECRETARY POMPEO:<\/strong> We\u2019ve been working everywhere in the world to make sure that every nation has trusted vendors for their information technology systems. Not just the United Kingdom, but 190 countries \u2013 we want every one of them to make sure that their citizens\u2019 data isn\u2019t in the hands of the Chinese Communist Party. We are pleased with the United Kingdom\u2019s decision. We think they came to it after having reviewed the same data that we have seen about the risk of privacy of the facial recognition, data sets, all of that that transits across Huawei\u2019s systems, inevitably being made available to the Chinese Communist Party. They concluded that wasn\u2019t in their nation\u2019s best interest and made the decision you saw this week. We were happy about that outcome because we think it helps the United States as well, because you have Americans that have their information transiting across those systems when they travel to the United Kingdom as well.\"<\/p>",
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