(TibetanReview.net, Feb09’20) – US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has on Feb 8 urged the country’s state governors to resist Chinese pressure to shun Taiwan as he warned that Beijing was increasingly taking its diplomatic battle to the local level. He has also urged them to ignore Beijing’s pressure on Tibet.
“Don’t make separate individual deals and agreements with China that undermine our national policy,” the AFP Feb 8 quoted Pompeo as saying in an address to state leaders gathered in Washington.
He has pointed to a threat last year sent to Mississippi’s governor that China would cancel investment over his visit to Taiwan. He has also cited a letter by a Chinese diplomat calling on state governments not to congratulate Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen on her re-election last month and a case in which a high school in Chicago withdrew an invitation to a Taiwanese representative to take part in a climate discussion.
“It’s one thing to pressure the secretary of state of the United States of America. It seems quite something else to go after a high school principal,” Pompeo has said.
The report said Pompeo also warned of Chinese pressure on local leaders not to meet Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader the Dalai Lama.
