US ideologues' claims about China dangerously divorced from reality

With the benefit of hindsight, it is easy to understand why United States Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, FBI Director Christopher Wray and National Security Advisor Robert O'Brien all went to great lengths recently to accuse China of stealing US technology.

It is now clear that they were laying the groundwork for the US administration's order that China close its consulate in Houston, a move it was claimed would "protect American intellectual property and Americans' private information".

However, as usual, no evidence has been forthcoming to support the allegations, just the spurious accusation that the consulate was a node for "a vast network of spies and influence operations in the United States".

In fact, although the move is set within a broader spat between the two countries about consulates, it is an expediency in accordance with the presidential election strategy outlined for administration officials and the Republican Party by the strategic communications company O'Donnell & Associates, which proposes the constant hammering home of two main messages, namely that "China is not an ally, and they're not just a rival－they are an adversary and the Chinese Communist Party is our enemy", and as a supposed corollary to this, "The Chinese Communist Party caused this pandemic".

Hence, the insistence on the discredited allegation that the pathogen escaped from a virology laboratory in Wuhan, capital of Hubei province, and the unsubstantiated charge that the CPC is "pursuing a campaign of intellectual property theft, economic espionage, cyber intrusions that target businesses－big and small－all across the country and our academic research institutions", including healthcare, as Wray scare-mongered.

The administration feels no qualms about harming the interests of US companies, universities and institutes with its China-bashing moves that block normal bilateral technological, business and personnel exchanges.

All of the Chinese companies operating in the US, the Chinese scholars and students in the US are engaged in normal academic and research activities. The exchanges and engagement between China and the US over the past more than 40 years, contrary to what the US administration now claims, have brought tremendous tangible benefits to not only the two countries but also the rest of the world.

That the current US administration pretends to be blind to that, and is hell-bent on vilifying China is because US politics has been hijacked by a gang of unscrupulous political hooligans, who rather than seeking ways to expand the two countries' common interests are now trying to coerce the world into erecting a "bamboo curtain".

This only serves to expose the moldering ideology that infests Washington, and which will expedite the US' decline if not discarded.