Speaking of China, with hours left in Donald Trump's presidency, China's foreign ministry took aim at its chief U.S. antagonist, "lying and cheating" Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and said it would seek cooperation with the incoming administration of Joe Biden.
Mr Pompeo, who has unleashed a barrage of measures against China in his final weeks in office, delivered his own parting shot on Tuesday when he announced that the Trump administration had determined that China has committed “genocide and crimes against humanity” by repressing Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang.
"Pompeo has made so many lies in recent years, and this is just another bold-faced lie," foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told a regular media briefing.
"This so-called determination by Pompeo is nothing but paper. This U.S. politician is notorious for lying and cheating, is making himself a laughing stock and a clown," she said.
China has repeatedly rejected accusations of abuse of the Uighur population in its western Xinjiang region, where a United Nations panel has said that at least 1 million Uighurs and other Muslims had been detained in camps.
However, Biden's secretary of state appointee, Antony Blinken, said on Tuesday that he agreed with Mr Pompeo's genocide assessment.
"The forcing of men, women and children into concentration camps; trying to, in effect, re-educate them to be adherents to the ideology of the Chinese Communist Party, all of that speaks to an effort to commit genocide," he said.
