Mike Pence, the US vice-president, has chided China for becoming “even more aggressive and destabilising” over the past year and singled out Nike as he criticised corporate America for complicity with Beijing.
In a long-awaited speech at the Wilson Center, a think-tank in the US capital, Mr Pence on Thursday insisted that Washington was not seeking confrontation with China or a decoupling of the world’s largest economies. But he attacked China for slashing “rights and liberties” in Hong Kong, building a “surveillance state unlike anything the world has ever seen”, continuing to “aid and abet the theft of our intellectual property” and pursuing military expansionism.
He also criticised US multinational companies for kowtowing to Chinese officials, as they sought access to the Chinese market’s customers and supply chains. He specifically singled out Nike, the shoe company, for “checking its social conscience at the door” when it removed Houston Rockets merchandise from its shelves after the NBA basketball team’s general manager tweeted in support of protesters in Hong Kong.