Beijing: Once Joe Biden had been sworn in as America’s 46th President on January 20, China wasted no time in imposing sanctions against outgoing Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and 27 other top officials under Donald Trump.
The former officials and their immediate family members will be banned from entering mainland China, Hong Kong or Macau, or doing business with China, for “lying and cheating”, reported Reuters.
Like Trump, Pompeo had been vocal against China’s policies for quite some time, including the coronavirus pandemic. On his final full day in office, Pompeo accused China of committing genocide against Uighur Muslims.
Around the time that Biden was taking oath at the US Capitol on Wednesday, the Chinese foreign ministry announced the sanctions through a statement on its website.
Pompeo and the others had “planned, promoted and executed a series of crazy moves, gravely interfered in China’s internal affairs, undermined China’s interests, offended the Chinese people, and seriously disrupted China-US relations,” the statement said.
Interestingly, Pompeo’s likely successor Anthony Blinken agreed with the former’s assessment.
“The forcing of men, women and children into concentration camps; trying to, in effect, re-educate them to be adherents to the ideology of the Chinese Communist Party, all of that speaks to an effort to commit genocide,” Blinken said.
