Editor's Note: China announced sanctions against former US secretary of state Mike Pompeo and 27 other officials in the Donald Trump administration on Thursday for violating China's sovereignty and derailing China-US ties. Five experts share their views with China Daily on the issue. Excerpts follow:
Apt response to Pompeo
In the final days of the Trump administration, especially after the presidential election result had become clear, then US secretary of state Mike Pompeo started running the US State Department with a Cold War mindset and an anti-China agenda, without any regard for long-term US foreign policy interests. Through a blizzard of poisonous measures, many targeting China, he engaged in a kind of geopolitical vandalism that history has never seen before.
For example, Pompeo put some officials of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region and the central government posted in the United States on the US' sanction list for allegedly "suppressing democracy", when in fact they basically tried to quell the rioters vandalizing the Hong Kong Legislative Council building in July 2019. Those rioters were 10 times as violent as the Trump supporters that stormed the US Capitol on Jan 6 this year.
Censuring the Chinese mainland and Hong Kong officials for fulfilling their duty of enforcing the law is akin to censuring US politicians and police officers, including a few who made the ultimate sacrifice, for controlling the mob on Capitol Hill.
The purpose of Pompeo's measures is clear. By using, more precisely abusing, his power, he has tried to create obstacles for the incoming Joe Biden administration and prevent it from rectifying the Trump administration's wrongs. Such sanctions, in essence, were part of Pompeo's devious efforts to force his successor to follow his ludicrous policy direction. The damage, in many cases, will be long-term－it could even be permanent in some cases.
For a long time, the Trump administration had been talking about reciprocity in Sino-US relations. The wanton sanctioning of Chinese officials by the Trump administration has been reciprocated with the Chinese Foreign Ministry announcing that Pompeo and 27 other Trump officials, most of them involved in decisions related to foreign policy and national security, are barred from entering the mainland and the Hong Kong and Macao SARs, and being involved in China-related business dealings.
The State Department under Pompeo was an aberration in the history of Sino-US relations. Hopefully, the dark chapter has become history with the exit of Pompeo and his executive master from office. And we hope the State Department under Anthony Blinken, the new secretary of state, will move in the right direction and not be entangled in the terrible mesh created by his predecessor.
John Gong, a professor at the University of International Business and Economics
Message to improve bilateral relations
Beijing banned 28 Trump administration officials from traveling to the mainland and the Hong Kong and Macao SARs minutes after Biden's presidential inauguration. The ban on traveling to and conducting business in the three places seems to apply to not just these former officials, but also their immediate family members and the companies they have connections with. The ban is China's response to those officials' nefarious designs to destroy mutually beneficial US-China ties. Over the past four years, they not only harmed Chinese interests and infringed upon China's sovereignty but also compromised American interests.
Perhaps the last-minute sanctions against China by the Trump administration－just before the transfer of power in the US－was the last straw for China.
The 28 former officials, especially the 10 mentioned by name on the Chinese Foreign Ministry's website, are known to be prejudiced against not just China's political system but also the Chinese people. These China hawks advocated a containment strategy toward China.
The well-timed message seems to be clear: China wants to end the free fall of Sino-US ties as Biden starts to right Trump's wrongs.
However, China still respects foreign heads of state although Trump kept referring to the novel coronavirus as the "China Virus" even in his last speech as president and is allegedly responsible for the storming of the Capitol.
China's sanction list is making history just as the Trump administration's unilateral and punitive measures against China did. The lesson both the Biden administration and the Chinese government could learn is to make the best efforts to better manage US-China ties based on reason so that another round of tit-for-tat exchanges are avoided.
Jia Wenshan, adjunct professor at Shandong University
Move far more than symbolic
China's decision to sanction 28 senior officials of the Trump administration is more than symbolic. Those officials and their family members have been banned from entering the mainland, and the Hong Kong and Macao SARs, and companies and institutions they have connections with are barred from doing business in these three places.
That means any foreign company doing business with China should not employ those officials or their family members. As such, most leading companies and organizations will think twice before employing or establishing ties with them, not least because China is the second-biggest economy in the world and the third-largest trading partner of the US.
Therefore, American enterprises, and accounting and law firms that have branch offices in Hong Kong and Macao need to especially weigh the cost of maintaining ties with those 28 people.
It's unrealistic to expect the Biden administration to take a U-turn on the US' current China policy, especially after the Trump administration labeled China a strategic rival. But Sino-US ties should and can be characterized by healthy competition and cooperation, rather than vicious confrontation.
China's sanction move demonstrates that it has the resolve and the capability to take concrete countermeasures against any country to safeguard its national interests.
Liang Haiming, chairman of the China Silk Road iValley Research Institute
Sanctions are a precision strike
The Trump administration officials were selected for sanctioning because they were greatly responsible for the deterioration in Sino-US relations over the past four years. Pompeo, for example, was busy provoking China even after the countdown for his exit had started. Peter Navarro, Trump's economic adviser; Robert O'Brien, his national security adviser; John Bolton, the national security adviser Trump fired; and Steve Bannon, the White House chief strategist Trump removed were the other major anti-China officials in the Trump administration.
In the past four years, China exercised exemplary restraint and tried to avoid confrontation with the US even when the China hawks in Washington took provocative actions against China, because it was always concerned about the stability of bilateral ties.
The US imposed several rounds of sanctions on Chinese products, services, companies, officials, academics and even students, including the blacklisting of six Chinese officials on Jan 15 and pointing the finger at the Hong Kong SAR government. Prohibiting the 28 people and their immediate family members from entering the Chinese mainland and the Hong Kong and Macao SARs and restricting companies associated with them from doing business in China is an effective response.
It should be made clear that China did not use its huge market to force US companies to press the US administration to lift the sanctions. Instead, American companies, out of concern that their interests are being hurt by the US' move, lobbied with the administration to lift the sanctions. For example, profits of US microchip giants Qualcomm and Intel fell drastically because they could not supply their products to Chinese companies, their major buyers.
But rather than heeding their request, the Trump administration imposed further sanctions on Chinese companies－in fact, it launched a war against China's high-tech industry.
That Biden stressed on unity in his inaugural address shows he faces serious domestic problems and may spend a majority of his time dealing with domestic issues. And the fact that China announced sanctions against Pompeo and other 27 other former US officials suggests China will not compromise on matters of principle and will not let people who sow hatred between China and the US go scot-free.
Beijing has conveyed many a time to Washington that it is ready to hold talks on an equal footing to resolve the disputes and resume Sino-US cooperation for win-win results. And now that Biden has been sworn in as the 46th US president, the two sides should make joint efforts to meet bilateral, regional and global governance challenges such as climate change, nuclear nonproliferation and public health, especially to contain the COVID-19 pandemic and boost global economic recovery. The US, on its part, should stop trying to decouple the Chinese and US economies and end the trade war Trump triggered, because these moves have not only hurt China but also backfired on the US.
Yuan Zheng, deputy director of the Institute of American Studies, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences
A silver lining in the new era
Thanks to Washington's global supremacy, many US politicians, such as the 28 on China's just-released sanction list, considered it their right to intervene in China's internal affairs, and frequently point the finger at Beijing over the Taiwan question, and matters related to Hong Kong, Xinjiang and Tibet.
Yet China's sanctions against the 28 officials has sent a clear message to the US that Beijing has zero tolerance to any politicians who have "gravely interfered in China's internal affairs, undermined China's interests, and offended the Chinese people".
The move will also shatter those two-faced US politicians' belief that they can get away scot-free after wantonly damaging China's interests. They can no longer cash in on China's market if they slander China while in office even if they take a U-turn after stepping down by saying what they did while in office was out of duty.
According to Biden's inauguration speech, he will give priority to containing the COVID-19 pandemic, boosting economic recovery and fighting climate change. But without cooperation with China, the US can hardly meet these goals.
Unlike his predecessor, Biden is expected to honor the one-China principle. There is a silver lining after four years of volatile Sino-US ties. Though the US policy toward China may basically remain the same, the Biden administration is more predictable and his policies may be more stable.
Hopefully, Biden will correct his processor's wrongs by engaging more with China and thus improving bilateral ties.
Zhu Songling, a professor at the Institute of Taiwan Studies, Beijing Union University
The views don't necessarily represent those of China Daily.
