Mike Pompeo urges more assertive approach to 'Frankenstein' China in major speech

Washington – U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo took fresh aim at China on Thursday and said Washington and its allies must use "more creative and assertive ways" to press the Chinese Communist Party to change its ways, calling it the "mission of our time." Speaking at the Nixon Library in former President Richard Nixon's birthplace in Yorba Linda, California, Pompeo said the late U.S. leader's worry about what he had done by opening the world to China's Communist Party in the 1970s had been prophetic. "President Nixon once said he feared he had created a'Frankenstein' by opening the world to the CCP," Pompeo said. Nixon, who died in 1994 and was president from 1969 to 1974 opened the way for the establishment of U.S. diplomatic relations with Communist China in 1979 through a series of contacts, including a visit to Beijing in 1972. In a major speech delivered after Washington's surprise order this week for China to close its Houston consulate, Pompeo repeated frequently leveled U.S. charges about Beijing's unfair trade practices, human rights abuses and efforts to infiltrate American society.