TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo blamed the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) for the frosty relations between Washington and Beijing in a video released by the Washington, D.C.-based Hudson Institute on (Oct. 19).

“There are a lot of red flags when it comes to the Chinese Communist Party,” Pompeo said. He suggested that it took Americans such a long time to realize the warning signs due to their optimistic nature and naivety.

Pompeo pointed out that the U.S. had originally wanted to become friends with China.

He accused the CCP of stealing American jobs and disseminating propaganda that antagonizes the U.S. The party also spies on America through TikTok, Huawei, and other technology, Pompeo said.

“It’s undertaken the largest peacetime military buildup in history. It tried to cover up the COVID-19 pandemic. America obviously isn’t the aggressor,” the former secretary of state added.

Pompeo said the CCP is intimidating Australians, Canadians, Czechs, Indians, Japanese, Taiwanese, and any person “who posts a picture of Winnie the Pooh on WeChat.” “The Chinese live under the world’s most severe surveillance and censorship, at the mercy of a thuggish government,” he added.

The former secretary of state has been a proponent of closer U.S.-Taiwan ties. When he visited Taiwan for the second time in late September to deliver a speech at a World Taiwanese Chambers of Commerce conference, he urged the U.S. to diplomatically recognize Taiwan as a "free and sovereign country."

He said that "Taiwan does not need to declare independence because it’s already an independent country." Pompeo also argued that Washington should engage with Beijing "realistically and on our terms," and added that this will entail "far more enthusiastic engagement with Taiwan."