US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Wednesday he would raise concerns about China next week as he travels to India, Sri Lanka, Maldives and Indonesia.

Pompeo and Defense Secretary Mark Esper will be visiting New Delhi early next week for a dialogue with their colleagues from India, whose relationship with China has sharply deteriorated this year over a deadly border clash.

Pompeo said he would afterward visit Sri Lanka, Maldives and Indonesia.

"I'm sure that my meetings will also include discussions on how free nations can work together to thwart threats posed by the Chinese Communist Party," Pompeo told reporters.

Asked about his stop in Jakarta, Pompeo said: "I know the Indonesians share our desire that there is a free and open Indo-Pacific."

Southeast Asian nations want to ensure "their basic rights -- their maritime rights, their sovereign rights, their ability to conduct business in the way that they want to inside of their country (that) the Chinese Communist Party continues to threaten."

Pompeo has championed a hard line on China on issues ranging from trade to security to the Covid-19 pandemic.

In July, the United States branded Beijing's vast claims in the dispute-rife South China Sea to be illegal.

Sri Lanka and Maldives have been major centers for infrastructure spending by China, to the alarm of both the United States and India.

Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa's brother, former president Mahinda Rajapaksa, borrowed billions of dollars from China for projects including ports, highways and railways, several of which ended up as white elephants that left the island facing a mountain of debt.

Pompeo, an evangelical Christian who often speaks of religious freedom, last year abruptly scrapped a previously planned trip to Sri Lanka in the wake of Islamist attacks on Christian sites on Easter Sunday that killed 269 people.

Pentagon chief stresses stronger alliances to counter China, Russia
Washington (AFP) Oct 21, 2020 - US Defense Secretary Mark Esper revealed a fresh drive to strengthen US alliances with "like-minded democracies" in part through arms sales in an effort to curb the global influence of Russia and China.

Esper said the Pentagon would systematically monitor and manage its relationships with partner countries, aiming to find ways to coordinate militaries and also to advance US arms sales.

The initiative, called the Guidance for Development for Alliances and Partnerships (GDAP), comes just two weeks before the presidential election that, if President Donald Trump loses, could see Esper replaced in January.

It also came after nearly four years of Trump's efforts to restructure and even dismantle alliances, including threatening NATO.

"America's network of allies and partners provides us an asymmetric advantage our adversaries cannot match," Esper said Tuesday, calling the network "the backbone of the international rules-based order."

"China and Russia probably have fewer than 10 allies combined," he added.

He said China uses coercion and financial entrapment to build its alliances with weak countries such as Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos.

"The smaller the nation and the greater its needs, the heavier the pressure from Beijing," he said.

He cited visits he has made to build defense relations with Malta, Mongolia and Palau, as well as US plans for a greater defense presence in Eastern Europe, including basing troops in Poland.

And he underscored the need to build closer ties to "like-minded democracies such as India and Indonesia" adding "they all recognize what China is doing."

A key part of this effort is to expand US arms sales, to both help allies improve defense capabilities and to bolster the US defense industry against competition from Moscow and Beijing, Esper said.

Esper said he has taken steps to ease restrictions on exports of "critical" weapons systems and speed up approvals, and will use the GDAP to identify arms sales opportunities and protect US markets.

He cited as an example the recent relaxation of US restrictions on the export of battlefield drones, which the United States could sell to Taiwan and the United Arab Emirates.

Esper's announcement was a "strategic miscalculation" which seeks to portray China "as an opponent", Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian told reporters in Beijing on Wednesday.

China and the US have locked horns over trade, human rights and China's growing global tech ambitions in recent years.

Washington has accused Beijing of stealing technology while China says it has started screening Chinese students and researchers departing the US.

Nearly 300 Chinese students leaving the US have been questioned at American airports from May to September and some of their electronic devices had been confiscated, spokesman Zhao said Wednesday.

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