Talks won’t make China change its aggressive stance: US NSA
China has amassed 60,000 troops on India’s northern border, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has said as he hit out at Beijing for its “bad behaviour” and the threats it poses to the Quad countries. US National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien said China has attempted to “seize” control of the Line of Actual Control (LAC) with India by force as part of its territorial aggression
The foreign ministers from the Indo-Pacific nations known as the Quad group - the US, Japan, India and Australia - met in Tokyo on Tuesday in what was their first in-person talks since the coronavirus pandemic began.
The meeting took place against the backdrop of China’s aggressive military behaviour in the Indo-Pacific, South China Sea and along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in eastern Ladakh.
“The Indians are seeing 60,000 Chinese soldiers on their northern border,” Pompeo told The Guy Benson Show in an interview on Friday after his return from Tokyo wherein he attended the second Quad ministerial with his counterparts from India, Japan and Australia.
“They see, the people of their (Quad) nations understanding that we all slept on this for too long. For decades, the West allowed the Chinese Communist Party to walk all over us. The previous administration bent a knee, too often allowed China to steal our intellectual properties and the millions of jobs that came along with it. They see that in their country too,” he said in the interview.
“CCP’s (Chinese Communist Party) territorial aggression is also apparent on its Indian border where China has attempted to seize control of the Line of Actual Control by force,” US National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien said in a remark on China early this week in Utah.
The Chinese territorial aggression is also true in the Taiwan Strait where the PLA (People’s Liberation Army) Navy and Air Force continue to conduct threatening military drills, O’Brien said. “Beijing’s signature international development programme, One Belt One Road (OBOR), involves impoverished companies taking on opaque and unsustainable Chinese loans to pay Chinese firms employing Chinese labourers to build their infrastructure,” he said.
Many of these projects are unnecessary, shoddily built and are “white elephants”, the national security advisor said. “And now these countries’ dependence on the Chinese debt leaves their sovereignty eroded and with no choice but to hue to the party’s line on UN votes or any other issue that the Chinese Communist Party considers a red line,” he said.
O’Brien also noted that China’s other international aid efforts include selling surveillance systems and similar tools of repression to “pariah regimes” around the world, including Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro.