Donald Trump has put pressure on China.
Washington, United States:
The United States said on Thursday that all options were open to put pressure on China, which has expressed outrage at reports that President Donald Trump is considering a visa ban for Communist party members.
The New York Times and later The Wall Street Journal reported that Trump is considering a proposal to deny entry into the United States for all members of the ruling party – which includes a who’s who of the political and business elite of the most populous nation in the world.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, when asked about information on Fox News, said the administration was planning to “push back the Chinese Communist Party”.
“We want to make sure that we do it in a way that reflects American tradition, and there are a lot of ideas that are being discussed by the president and by our team,” he said, without commenting directly.
White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said about Trump at a press conference: “He hasn’t ruled out any action against China.”
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying described the idea of a visa ban as “very pathetic” for the “strongest power in the world“.
“We hope the United States will refrain from doing more things that disregard basic standards of international relations and undermine its reputation, credibility and status as a major country,” she told reporters.
Trump has stepped up pressure on China, repeatedly accusing Asian power of failing to prevent the coronavirus pandemic, which weighs heavily on the United States months before the election.
Last week, the State Department said it would refuse visas to three senior Chinese officials for abuses in the Xinjiang region, where rights groups say more than one million Uighurs and other Turkish Muslims are incarcerated.
But a radical ban on members of the Chinese Communist Party would be an extraordinary undertaking, forcing the American authorities to intensify the screening of the three million Chinese who visited each year before the pandemic stopped the trips.
Last year, Chinese state media said more than 90 million people belonged to the party, 35% of whom were “workers and peasants.”
For many Chinese, membership in the 99-year-old party is considered vital for advancement. Many observers were surprised in 2018 to learn that Jack Ma, the billionaire businessman behind the e-commerce titan Alibaba, belongs to the party.
(With the exception of the title, this story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
