China sanctions Trump officials including Mike Pompeo
China has slapped sanctions on 28 top US figures including former secretary of state Mike Pompeo, who it claimed violated Chinese sovereignty.
Pompeo joined a list of US political heavyweights banned from doing business with China, including John Bolton, Donald Trump’s former national security advisor, Peter Navarro, former director of trade, and Steve Bannon, former White House chief strategist.
The sanctions, which were announced as Joe Biden was sworn in as the 46th US President, will bar the 28 individuals and their families from entering mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau. It will also prohibit them from doing any business with China.
It comes after Pompeo on Monday held a conference with the president of Taiwan, the self-ruling island claimed by Beijing as its own.
In one of his final acts in the White House, he also accused Beijing of committing genocide and crimes against humanity in its repression of Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang.
China slammed the move as “crazy actions” that constituted a “grave interference” in Chinese politics.
Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying told reporters at a briefing that Pompeo was “notorious for lying and deceiving,” and that he was turning himself into a “joke of the century with his last madness and lies”.
In a statement, the Chinese foreign ministry said: “Over the past few years, some anti-China politicians in the United States, out of their selfish political interests and prejudice and hatred against China and showing no regard for the interests of the Chinese and American people, have planned, promoted and executed a series of crazy moves which have gravely interfered in China’s internal affairs, undermined China’s interests, offended the Chinese people, and seriously disrupted China-US relations.”
Relations between the world’s two biggest economies plummeted to decades-long lows during Trump’s presidency, with the two sides repeatedly clashing on issues including Taiwan, Hong Kong, human rights and the coronavirus pandemic.
China last year unveiled sanctions on 11 American citizens, including politicians from Trump’s administration, in response to US sanctions on Hong Kong and Chinese officials accused of thwarting democratic protests.