Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s latest move to cut off U.S.-Chinese relations was yesterday’s announcement that the United States will no longer participate in the 2011 “Memorandum of Understanding between the U.S. and Chinese Governments Concerning the Establishment of a U.S.-China Governors Forum To Promote Sub-National Cooperation.” Five U.S.-Chinese Governors Summits had been held since the MOU was signed, fostering trade, investment and understanding between the two countries, to the mutual benefit of both.
It is that friendship and trade which the State Department charges denounced as an effort
“to directly and malignly influence” U.S. state and local leaders on behalf of China’s “global agenda,” through the Chinese People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries (CPAFFC) which helped sponsor the governors’ forums. Pompeo first signaled that these normal, friendly relationships between U.S. and Chinese state officials were in his sights in his Feb. 8, 2020 diatribe to the National Governors’ Conference, where he threatened the governors that by dealing with China and the CPAFFC, they would be considered stooges of the “Chinese Communist Party.”
