Speaking at the Nixon Library in President Richard Nixon’s birthplace in Yorba Linda, California, Pompeo said the former American President Nixon worried about the ramifications the world would face after he initiated the opening up of the China’s Communist Party to the globe in the 1970s and his prophecies have eventually come out true.
“President Nixon once said he feared he had created a “Frankenstein” by opening the world to the CCP,” Pompeo said. “And here we are.”
Nixon, who died in 1994 and was president from 1969-74 is hailed as the pioneer in establishing the diplomatic and political ties between United States and Communist-ruled China in 1979 through a series of bilateral engagements, including a state visit to Beijing in 1972.
In a major speech delivered after Washington’s surprise order this week for China to close its Houston consulate, Pompeo repeated leveled US charges on Beijing for its unfair trade practices, human rights voilations and efforts to infiltrate American society.
He said China’s military had became “stronger and more menacing” and the approach to China should be “distrust and verify,” adapting President Ronald Reagan’s “trust but verify” mantra about the Soviet Union in the 1980s.
“The kind of engagement we have been pursuing has not brought the kind of change inside of China that President Nixon hoped to induce,” Pompeo said.
Pompeo appealed to "free nations" to counter Chinese President Xi Jinping’s regime, whom he accused of being a "true believer" in the "bankrupt" totalitarian Marxist-Leninist ideology.
"His ideology informs his decades-long desire for global hegemony built on Chinese Communism," the top US diplomat said while speaking on 'Communist China and the Free World's Future' at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library here.