{ "error": "", "type": "text", "title": "Secretary Pompeo With Hugh Hewitt of The Hugh Hewitt Show - China and Taiwan", "slug": "secretary-pompeo-with-hugh-hewitt-of-the-hugh-hewitt-show-china-and-taiwan", "text": "
QUESTION:<\/strong> All right. Let me ask you about one particular charge, the most troubling charge by Ambassador Bolton: Did the President in any way condone or encourage General Secretary Xi\u2019s concentration camps for the Uyghurs, on whose behalf you\u2019ve spoken \u2013 you personally have spoken frequently and forcefully?<\/p>\n SECRETARY POMPEO:<\/strong> I have indeed. When I was in Central Asia, I had a chance to meet with Uyghurs who had family members that were in those camps in Western China. The President signed \u2013 while I was meeting with my Chinese counterpart in Honolulu last week, the President signed a piece of legislation. It was a bipartisan piece of legislation that is historic, calling out the human rights violation in Western China. I don\u2019t know where John got that information.<\/p>\n My observation is the President\u2019s been very clear. We have a complicated balancing set of issues when it comes to human rights, but he\u2019s always been very clear about what the expectation should be about how America will be a leader on that issue. Whether it\u2019s freedom for the people of Hong Kong, human rights in \u2013 for the Rohingya, all across the world, this President has understood that it\u2019s important for America to be a true beacon for freedom and liberty and human rights around the world.<\/p>\n QUESTION:<\/strong> So did you ever see him encourage Xi to put Uyghurs in concentration camps?<\/p>\n SECRETARY POMPEO:<\/strong> No, absolutely not. [...]<\/p> QUESTION: <\/strong>Mr. Secretary, Tom Rogan at the Washington Examiner<\/em> today has a column saying that your meeting in Hawaii last week was actually a Chinese plot to split you from President Trump. Do you believe that\u2019s what it was? And if so, did it work?<\/p>\n SECRETARY POMPEO: <\/strong>Well, I\u2019ll leave to others to speculate about the Chinese motivation for meeting with me. I know why I wanted to meet. I wanted to meet because we have a Chinese Communist Party that is behaving in ways that fundamentally put the American people\u2019s security at risk. I work for a president for the first time in decades who has taken this threat seriously. That\u2019s not partisan; those were Republican and Democrat presidents. It was a different time in history. Today, the absolute clarity we have about the risk of the Chinese Communist Party in all of the vectors \u2013 we see what\u2019s happening in Hong Kong, we see what\u2019s happening in the Himalayas with India, we see what\u2019s happening in the South China Sea, we watch as they steal intellectual property. I could go on.<\/p>\n I wanted to go meet with my \u2013 with Yang Jiechi, my counterpart\u2019s boss, to share with him how America was thinking about this, how America was going to act, and our expectations \u2013 not for about what the Chinese Communist Party would say, but how the Chinese Communist Party would act. And they sometimes think that flowery language works and that sending out communiques matters. In the end, what we need to see from them is a change in behavior. When I left that day, I did not leave optimistic that the Chinese Communist Party was prepared to give us any notice that there were changes that were going to be made. And then of course, within a handful of days, it looks like they have now moved on their national security legislation, putting at risk the freedom that the people of Hong Kong have been promised.<\/p> QUESTION: <\/strong>Secretary Gates just told me \u2013 or just confirmed for me that we are in Cold War 2.0. In fact, he said, quote, in fact, it\u2019s \u201ca little riskier,\u201d close quote. Do you agree with this assessment?<\/p>\n SECRETARY POMPEO: <\/strong>I\u2019ll leave to Mr. Gates, who I have enormous respect for and who has been very kind to take my calls over these past three and a half years when I had questions or thoughts, things I wanted to hear as a historical matter and get his wisdom \u2013 I\u2019ll leave to him to characterize it for now. I can say this much: We have an integrated economy with the Chinese Communist Party. That is different from what we had with the Soviet Union when we were in the Cold War in the 1980s. We have to think about this in a way that reflects that, because the challenges of American economic growth and prosperity are deeply intertwined today with the Chinese economy.<\/p>\n And we now know too that if we don\u2019t challenge that, if we don\u2019t protect our intellectual property, if we don\u2019t call out when they are using Chinese communications infrastructure to connect to the MSS, their security apparatus, when we don\u2019t take seriously the threat of their state-sponsored enterprises, our economy is at risk as well. And President Trump has said enough, we\u2019re not going to do that. He\u2019s imposed tariffs, he\u2019s engaged in economic response that are fully justified by the aggressive Chinese economic activity that is engaged in here in the United States, and frankly against our European friends as well.<\/p>\n QUESTION: <\/strong>Last question, Mr. Secretary: The People\u2019s Liberation Army Navy has threatened maneuvers in August, which Taiwan \u2013 some people believe threaten Taiwan and threaten islands that are governed by Taiwan which are empty. Did those maneuvers come up in your talks in Hawaii, and what is the position of the United States Government concerning those maneuvers?<\/p>\n SECRETARY POMPEO: <\/strong>We talked a great deal about military activity, ours \u2013 they\u2019re not happy that our Department of Defense, our Navy has been exercising its right to navigate in free open waterways all across the Indo-Pacific and expressed our clear intention to continue to do so. And then we talked too about Taiwan. There\u2019s a clear understanding between our two countries about the expectations about how each of our two countries will behave. They were concerned. This administration is now notified of a sale of F-16s to Taiwan. They\u2019re not happy about it. This is completely appropriate, consistent with how previous administrations have treated Taiwan. And we will continue to do all the things that President Trump outlined when he was campaigning and what he\u2019s talked about in these last two and a half years to ensure that we do the right thing to keep the American people free and safe and prosperous, and don\u2019t allow the Chinese Communist Party to put that at risk.\"<\/p>",
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