Pompeo: Chinese Communist Party looking for a 'soft underbelly' in Biden's administration

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Pompeo: Chinese Communist Party looking for Biden's 'soft underbelly'

Former secretary of state tells 'Fox News Primetime' China looking for a way to steamroll new administration

The Chinese Communist Party is looking for the "soft underbelly" of the Biden administration in the hope of achieving a series of endeavors Donald Trump stymied as president, according to former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

"Do you expect to Beijing to try to take over Taiwan the way it has moved into Hong Kong; the way it has acquired Tibet?" asked "Fox News Primetime" host Maria Bartiromo in an exclusive interview Tuesday.

"I dont think there's any doubt of what the ultimate ambition of Secretary Xi [Jinping] is," Pompeo answered. "I have every belief that they will challenge this administration to see if they can find the soft underbelly, to see if they can find a path forward to continue to apply pressure to the Taiwanese people.

"I hope this [Biden] administration will do what a number of past administrations have done," Pompeo added. "I think ours did it in a way that was unique, but to make clear, the expectation was that Chinese Communist Party would live up to its commitments in the same way we would live up to our commitments that we made with respect to Taiwan. It's the right thing for the American people, it's how you put America First and something that the Chinese Communist Party will understand the most."

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Pompeo added, however, that he was pleased by comments from Antony Blinken, his successor as secretary of state, that criticized China's treatment of Muslim minority Uighurs in northwestern Xinjiang Province.

"These are real people being truly impacted by things we haven't seen since the 1930s," Pompeo said. "The atrocities that have taken place [in Xinjiang] ... the actions of sterilization, forced abortion ... the world, not just the United States, but the whole world needs to unite and put costs on the Chinese Communist Party such that they change and stop these atrocities that are taking place there."

Pompeo also said that it was disappointing to see the Biden administration focus on "woke" semantics by banning the use of the term "China virus" in federal documents.

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"It began in Wuhan. It is, in fact, a virus that came from that place. We know that the Chinese Communist Party covered that up. We know that they disappeared doctors and journalists who wanted to write about it and were told they couldn't," Pompeo recalled. "We know that. I think still to this date, the World Health Organization hasn't been able to see the most important elements of where this virus may have begun. These are things the State Department was talking about while I was secretary of state ..."

"These are important things," he added. "The American people need to know them because they matter. They matter for our health, for our safety, for economic prosperity and for our security, and I hope and I'm counting on this next administration to do what the American people demand of them and continue to confront the Chinese Communist Party."