The New US Policy on Beijing, “Distrust and Verify”, Ends 50 Years of Sino-American Embrace

AFP file photo

WASHINGTON: “Distrust and Verify” will be Beijing’s new American approach, the United States said Thursday, declaring that the era of “calming China” is over, while making serious allegations of theft and espionage against the Communist regime’s country and its army.
In further deterioration on the grounds of ties between the two countries following the Trump administration’s order on Wednesday to close the Chinese Consulate in Houston on charges of espionage, Washington also accused the Chinese Consulate in San Francisco of housing a potential fugitive Chinese soldier posing as an investigator, a tactic that US officials believe is part of Beijings’ secret operations to steal US intellectual property.
In court proceedings, the FBI and the Department of Justice alleged that Tang Juan was issued a non-immigrant F1 student visa last fall to conduct research at the University of California, Davis, but after FBI agents found photos of her in military uniform on the internet, they interviewed her on June 20 about her visa application.
“The FBI assesses that at some point after Tang’s search and interview on June 20, 2020, Tang went to the Chinese consulate in San Francisco, where the FBI assesses that she has remained,” US attorneys wrote in a suit that July 20 was filed by the court. that brought federal charges against Tang for visa fraud.
The confrontation with the “investigator” hiding in the SFO Consulate follows a fundamental shift in US policy towards China that US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is expected to elaborate significantly at the Nixon Library in California on Thursday evening. , named after the president whose Chinese reach began nearly 50 years ago with four decades of fruitful involvement in the communist dictatorship.
President Trump and some of his senior aides now believe that China has used the time and US goodwill and goodwill through both the Republican and Democratic governments to “oust” the US in an attempt to catch up with the global power competitions. During a White House briefing, Trump did not rule out closing more Chinese consulates.
The US that is pressuring Chinese investigators and consulates is amid allegations that hackers working with the Chinese government have targeted companies that develop corona virus vaccines and hundreds of millions of dollars in intellectual property and trade secrets from companies around the world. have stolen the world.
“There has been a long challenge of stealing intellectual property from the Chinese Communist Party. President Trump has said enough. We will not allow this to continue to happen. We have clear expectations about how the Chinese Communist Party will behave And if they don’t, we’re going to take action to protect the American people, ”said Pompeo on Wednesday as he sought support in Europe for the harsh new American approach.
In Washington, US officials said the FBI and DOJ had discovered that Houston was the “epicenter of investigative theft”
by the Chinese Communist Party, identifying China’s “Thousand Talent Program” as a program specifically designed to recruit Chinese citizens to come to the United States to steal from our research institutions such as MD Anderson and energy technology and technology companies in the Houston area. “They revealed that in just one case, US agencies had discovered at least a billion dollars in investigative theft.
“Over the past 40 to 50 years, we’ve tried through republican and democratic administrations that opened up to China. We’ve tried reconciliation. We’ve tried to do more business and bring both countries together by bringing them to international organizations,” he said. the spokesman for the Department of State. Morgan Ortagus said in a TV interview that an example of what she said would be a “historic speech” by Pompeo in which he “explains how our opening to China has failed and how we are now embarking on a new policy of mistrust and verification. ”
The US outreach to China started in 1970 through Pakistan and with what was called “ping pong diplomacy” (with an American table tennis team visiting China). This paved the way for Republican President Nixons’ eight-day visit to China in 1972, which culminated seven years later in full diplomatic recognition of China by Democratic President Jimmy Carter and business ties, resulting in the world’s largest trading relationship of $ 636 billion – sharply skewed in favor of China.