FILE PHOTO: Secretary of State Mike Pompeo speaks at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, US, Jan 12, 2021. [Photo/Agencies]

Editor's note: On Thursday China announced sanctions against outgoing US secretary of state Mike Pompeo and 27 other officials in Trump administration for seriously violating China's sovereignty and derailing China-US ties. Five experts share their views with China Daily on this issue. Excerpts follow:  

Reckoning on Pompeo's personal foreign policy 

In the waning days of the Trump administration, especially after the general election results had become clear, then US secretary of state Mike Pompeo started to run the US State Department with a personal agenda, under a personal Cold War mindset, without any regard for long-term US foreign policy interests. Via a blizzard of poisonous measures, many targeting China, he essentially engaged in a spree of a kind of geopolitical vandalism that history has never seen before of a State Department under a lame duck presidency.

For example, Pompeo put some officials of the Hong Kong SAR and central government officials stationed there on a sanction list for allegedly "suppressing democracy", which in fact was basically quelling an insurrection at the Hong Kong legislative council in July 2019, but 10 times as violent as the insurrection at the US Capitol on Jan 6 this year.

Censuring these Chinese officials and officers, who fulfilled their duties to defend the constitution in Hong Kong, would be akin to censuring the US politicians and police officers, including a few who made the ultimate sacrifice, in putting up a courageous fight against the storming mob in Washington DC.

The purpose of these measures is clear. By using, more appropriately abusing, the US executive power, it essentially boxed in the incoming administration and constrained it from rectifying its wrongs any time soon. Such sanctions are aimed at pushing the incoming secretary of state to set foot in Pompeo's ludicrous policy direction. But the damage is also clear, as in many cases the damage would be of a long-term nature and permanent in some cases.

The reckoning finally arrived. For a long time, the Trump administration has been talking about reciprocity in the Sino-US relations. The wanton sanctioning of Chinese officials by the Trump administration is now reciprocated. The Chinese Foreign Ministry announced that Mike Pompeo and several other Trump officials mostly involved in foreign policy and national security matters are now barred from entering China, Hong Kong and Macao, and are barred from being involved in China-related business dealings.

The State Department under Mike Pompeo is an aberration in the history of Sino-US relations. Hopefully the final dark chapter will be gone with Pompeo and other politicians like him, as we would hope the Biden administration's State Department under Anthony Blinken would look ahead and move forward, not to be entangled in the terrible mess created by his predecessor.

John Gong, a professor at the University of International Business and Economics

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