Mike Pompeo and Boris Johnson sit in socially distant chairs in the garden at 10 Downing Street
London:
Visiting US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo met with Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Tuesday in a bid to bring Britain ever closer in Washington’s diplomatic standoff with China.
The senior US diplomat will also meet with Foreign Minister Dominic Raab and a hawkish faction in the ruling Conservative Party that wants Beijing punished for its treatment of Hong Kong and the persecution of over a million ethnic Uyghurs and others. predominantly Muslim minorities.
“Social distancing does not imply diplomatic or political distancing,” Johnson joked as he led Pompeo to his office in Downing Street.
Pompeo’s last visit to London in January came just days after Johnson ignored Washington’s warnings and allowed Chinese tech giant Huawei to help deploy Britain’s 5G network.
It was a frosty affair that saw Pompeo accuse Britain of endangering Western intelligence sharing by placing China at the heart of its next-generation data system.
Britain’s relationship with China flourished as Johnson sought lucrative partners who could fill the void left by the UK’s January exit from the European Union.
But the months that followed saw Britain increasingly share the view within President Donald Trump’s administration that China was a global threat.
Johnson’s most dramatic policy reversal has seen him order UK mobile service providers to stop buying 5G equipment from Huawei from next year and phase out existing equipment by 2027.
Pompeo praised Johnson for having “the full stretch of the stick on this one”.
China’s foreign ministry responded by accusing Britain of becoming “America’s dupe.”
The array of measures Johnson has taken over the past month threatens to end prematurely a ‘golden decade’ of cooperation that former UK Finance Minister George Osborne promised during a visit to Beijing in 2015.
London also outraged Beijing by offering nearly three million Hong Kong residents a pathway to British citizenship in response to a highly controversial security law that China imposed on the former British colony last month. .
Britain followed that on Monday by suspending its extradition treaty with Hong Kong and extending a “potentially lethal” arms embargo that previously only applied to mainland China.
Unpopular president
Pompeo’s visit will include a sideline meeting with exiled Hong Kong protest leader Nathan Law to further highlight Beijing’s apparent new understanding.
However, some tensions between London and Washington persist.
Johnson is keen to avoid being too closely associated with Trump – whose approval in Britain languishes at around 20% – despite the “special relationship” between the two historic allies.
The UK government stresses that it only abandoned Huawei after new US sanctions imposed in May threatened the safety of future 5G equipment produced in China.
But Pompeo said he didn’t think U.S. sanctions played a role.
“You suggested they did it because of the US sanctions. I don’t think that’s true,” he told reporters last week.
“I actually think they did it because their security teams came to the same conclusion as ours is that you can’t protect this information.”
Washington argues that the Chinese Community Party can force Huawei to intercept UK data or shut down the UK network during wartime.
Huawei has always denied that this is the case.
The release by the UK parliament of a delayed report that criticized the government for failing to properly consider any Russian interference in the 2016 Brexit referendum also threatens to complicate Pompeo’s trip.
The report was commissioned in response to fears that Moscow tried to help Trump win the presidency in 2016.
Trump and Pompeo reject suggestions that Russia played a significant role in the vote.
Meanwhile, on Tuesday, U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper said he plans to visit China this year as Washington takes a tougher stance against Beijing in the contested South China Sea.
(This story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
