China US Photo: VCG
At the very last moment of the Trump administration, officials like Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and some diplomats in his Department of State have found that they were unwelcome abroad, whether in Taiwan or Europe, so they have lost their only remaining capability to make trouble for the incoming Biden administration, said Chinese experts.
The US state department said on Tuesday US time that it had cancelled all of its travel for the final eight days of the outgoing administration, including US Ambassador to the UN Kelly Craft’s planned trip to the island of Taiwan. The trip, which Taiwan’s secessionist authority had placed great hopes upon, has been rearranged into a videoconference between Craft and Tsai Ing-wen, the regional leader of the island.
Craft, unsurprisingly, has tried to provoke China over the island and tried to encourage secessionists by raising the old topic of encouraging Taiwan to join the World Health Assembly without China’s permission, according to the South China Morning Post.
"China will take all necessary actions to firmly safeguard its sovereignty. Some US officials will pay heavy prices for their erroneous words and actions,” said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian on Thursday at a routine press conference.
The words “some US officials” are specifically targeting officials like Craft and her boss Pompeo who aim to worsen the China-US ties and set “land mines” for Joe Biden and his team during the very last moments of the Trump administration, Lü Xiang, a research fellow at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing, told the Global Times on Thursday.
Previously, China has released clear messages to the US about what will happen if a senior US diplomat like Craft or Pompeo visits the island, said Lü, noting that there is a big difference between a videoconference and a trip to the island. If Craft were to visit the island, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) would definitely have a physical response.
A Beijing-based military expert who is familiar with the matter and requested anonymity said the PLA Navy and Air Force have multiple plans for “unprecedented military operations” to respond to such provocation. But fortunately, not every US politician is crazy, or they would be shocked by the PLA’s response and the strategic situation in the region would be profoundly changed again. “The PLA will prove that there is no airspace of Taiwan, only airspace of China.”
Apart from the efforts and deterrence from the Chinese mainland, the members of Biden’s team are also playing a positive role to stop Pompeo and his diplomats from making further trouble to damage China-US relations and ties with other countries, said Lü.
Pompeo has also cancelled his last trip to Europe at the last minute after some European politicians and officials were publicly critical of Donald Trump’s role in last week’s storming of the Capitol, according to The Guardian.
This shows that opportunists like Pompeo “have completely lost the game,” Lü said.
"They are not just unwelcome in the US, but also among US allies. They have failed to set ‘land mines’ for the next administration, to shape their own image as professional diplomats, and they leave no achievements or contribution to the US and the world, but an awful mess. People like Pompeo have no place in the future of US politics or international relations,” he said.