Coronavirus: Mike Pompeo declares US stands with Australia on China

Mike Pompeo declares unity with Australia as Donald Trump claims China responsible for ‘mass worldwide killings’.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has declared unity with Australia. Picture: AP.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has declared the US “stands with Australia” in the face of the latest bullying from China, saying the world is waking up to Beijing’s hostility towards free nations.

Mr Pompeo’s comments came as Donald Trump also stepped up his attack on China, saying its “incompetence” led to the “mass worldwide killings” from the coronavirus.

The Trump administration’s accelerated attacks on China came as a new poll showed American public opinion is turning sharply against Beijing in the wake of its failures to alert the world to the virus as it emerged in Wuhan late last year.

Mr Pompeo spoke of Australia in a wide-ranging attack on China delivered at the State Department in Washington Thursday (AEDT). His comments came after Beijing’s decision this week to slap tariffs on Australian barley exports after Scott Morrison called for an independent inquiry into the origins of the coronavirus.

“The Chinese Communist Party chose to threaten Australia with economic retribution for the simple act of asking for an independent inquiry into the origins of the virus. It’s not right,” Mr Pompeo said.

“We stand with Australia and the more than 120 nations now who have taken up the American call for an inquiry into the origins of the virus, so we can understand what went wrong and save lives now, and in the future.”

The Trump administration has sharply stepped up its attacks on China for its secrecy and lack of transparency over the coronavirus and has also been highly critical of Beijing’s cosy relationship with the World Health Organisation.

“Some wacko in China just released a statement blaming everybody other than China for the Virus which has now killed hundreds of thousands of people,” Mr Trump tweeted. “Please explain to this dope that it was the ‘incompetence of China’, and nothing else, that did this mass Worldwide killing!”

Some wacko in China just released a statement blaming everybody other than China for the Virus which has now killed hundreds of thousands of people. Please explain to this dope that it was the “incompetence of China”, and nothing else, that did this mass Worldwide killing!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 20, 2020

The president this week threatened to permanently halt US payments to the WHO unless the organisation reformed its practices and demonstrated greater independence from China.

It comes as a new poll shows Americans increasingly view China as an ‘enemy’ of the US amid ongoing tensions between the US and China over the coronavirus, unfair trading practices, the tariff war and strategic flashpoints like the South China Sea.

A Politico/Morning Consult found the percentage of voters who view China as an ‘enemy’ has risen 11 points to 31 per cent, while the percentage of voters who say it is an ally or friend has dropped 9 points to 23 per cent.

The new poll backs the findings of a recent Pew Research report which found two thirds of Americans have a negative view of China and only one quarter a positive one – the most negative finding on China since polls began on the issue since 2005.

Experts say US public opinion on China is set to worsen further this year given that both Republicans and Democrats have been critical of China’s role in the pandemic, with Mr Trump planning to make China a theme of his re-election campaign.

“It has just caused the relationship to go into a virtual free fall and it’s hard to know where the bottom is. I don’t think we’ve hit it yet,” Bonnie Glaser, a China expert with the Center for Strategic and International Studies told Politico. “The next six months is going to be a competition between the Republicans and Democrats over who can bash China harder, more effectively and show they can stand up for American interests better than the other guy.”

Mr Pompeo said the US has wrongly assumed that as China grew into a more mature nation it would become more like the west.

“That didn’t happen,” he said. “We greatly underestimated the degree to which Beijing is ideologically and politically hostile to free nations. The whole world is waking up to that fact.”

He said the Chinese Communist Party’s response to the COVID-19 outbreak in Wuhan had ‘accelerated our more realistic understanding of communist China.’

“President Xi claimed this week that China has acted “with openness, transparency, and responsibility.” I wish it were so,’ he said. ’Beijing continues to deny investigators access to relevant facilities, to withhold live virus samples, to censor discussion of the pandemic within China, and much, much more.’

Mr Pompeo said China’s contributions to fighting the pandemic were ‘paltry’ compared to the cost that they had imposed on the world.

“This plague has cost roughly 90,000 American lives. More than 36 million Americans have lost their job since March. Globally, 300,000 lives – could be as much as around $US9 trillion, according to our estimates, (is) the cost imposition on the world (caused) by the Chinese Communist Party’s failures,’ Mr Pompeo said.