US top diplomat Mike Pompeo on Wednesday warned the US
universities of Chinese students, who, he said, may be stealing their
innovations, AFP reported.

The US Secretary of State said this in an address in
Georgia, which has a thriving Asian-American community, and is up for senatorial
election for two posts next month, to decide who will control the Senate.

“If we don’t educate ourselves, if we’re not honest about
what’s taking place, we’ll get schooled by Beijing,” Pompeo said in a
speech at Georgia Tech.

“The Chinese Communist Party knows it can never match
our innovation,” Pompeo said. “That’s why it sends 400,000 students a
year to the United States of America.”

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Pompeo, who’s had hawkish views against China, said that the
United States should welcome Chinese who “genuinely” want to study in
the country but pointed to two cases of Chinese students who were charged with
spying and other examples of Beijing harassing its students abroad, AFP wrote.

He also advocated for closing down of Confucius Institutes,
the Chinese-language teaching institutions funded by Beijing, which are known
to toe the line set by Community Party back in the country. 

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“We need administrators to close Confucius Institutes
and investigate what so-called student groups backed by the CCP money are
actually up to on their campuses,” Pompeo said.

“We cannot allow this tyrannical regime to steal our
stuff, to build their military might, brainwash our people or buy off our
institutions to help them cover up these activities.”

Pompeo alleged that US Universities were “rife with
anti-Americanism” because of the inroads made in them by China through the
left-leaning institutions in the country.

Pompeo also criticized several universities by name, including
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he alleged his appearance was
cancelled by the varsity president saying that his views “might insult
their ethnic Chinese students and professors.”

But the varsity denied the claim in a statement saying that
it was “honored to be considered” for Pompeo’s speech back in August, but had
to give it a pass owing to restrictions in place because of COVID-19.

“MIT turned down a number of other high-level guests
for the same reasons,” the statement read.

Pompeo has described China as a central threat to the world
and declared that President Donald Trump has turned the page on decades of US
engagement with Beijing that have failed.