Pompeo uses Taiwan 'for personal political gain'

The visit to China's Taiwan region by former United States secretary of state Mike Pompeo this week, his second trip to the island this year, was for personal political gain, spokespersons said.

Pompeo arrived in Taiwan on Monday night following an earlier trip in March. He attended a business forum in Kaohsiung on Tuesday and claimed the island is "an independent country" while giving a speech.

Zhu Fenglian, the spokeswoman for the State Council's Taiwan Affairs Office, said at a news conference in Beijing on Wednesday, that "everyone knows what kind of person Pompeo is".

Foreign Ministry Spokesman Wang Wenbin also denounced the visit at a news conference on Tuesday, saying that Pompeo is "a former politician whose credibility has long gone bankrupt".

"He staged these stunts for personal political gain. His calculations will not materialize," he said.

Zhu condemned the ruling Democratic Progressive Party authorities in Taiwan for having repeatedly incited the former politician to visit Taiwan and try every trick to mislead the public.

"How much hard-earned money of the Taiwan people has been spent by the DPP authorities? There should be an explanation for the people," she said.

Asked for her comment on the remarks made by State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi during a speech at the Asia Society in New York last week, that referred to "Taiwan independence" as being like a highly destructive "gray rhino" charging toward us that must be resolutely stopped, Zhu said the separatist forces pose a serious threat to peace across the Taiwan Straits.

The DPP authorities, in association with external forces, are constantly making provocations to seek independence, undermining the hard-won peaceful development of cross-Straits relations, and attempting to change the fact that both sides of the Taiwan Straits belong to one and same China, she said.