#Mike Pompeo says he’ll decline ‘PR stunt’ invite to visit China

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Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in his Washington, DC, office today.
David Butow for NY Post

WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Wednesday told The Post that he won’t accept a “PR stunt” invitation to visit China.

“There’s no reason to go there and go on a Chinese Communist Party guided tour,” Pompeo said during an interview in his Washington office.

A Chinese government spokesman last month invited Pompeo to tour the western Xinjiang province to see that there are no “concentration camps” for members of the Muslim Uighur minority.

“I suspect that was a PR stunt and not a real offer,” Pompeo said.

The nation’s top diplomat has condemned the camps established to “reeducate” Uighurs.

“It sounds like there were two parts to the statement … the first half of that is false, it is a lie. So I imagine that the second half of the invitation is not worth much either,” Pompeo said of the offer.

“I’ll wait until we have a real sincere offer and a commitment that we will actually have the capacity to see the things we want to see in a way that we would want to see them,” he said. “There would need a lot of work where we’d actually have access in real time.”

President Trump in June signed a bill authorizing sanctions against Chinese officials for human rights abuses against Uighurs. Under that law, four Chinese officials were hit with sanctions last month.

Treatment of the Muslim minority is one of several flashpoints in souring US-China relations. The Trump administration also sanctioned Chinese officials over the recent elimination of political autonomy in Hong Kong and Trump routinely calls COVID-19 “the China virus,” alleging the Chinese government hid crucial early data on the outbreak.