China Crushing Rights Of Own People In HK: Pompeo

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has highlighted protests in Hong Kong and the incarceration of Uighur Muslims to accuse Beijing of trampling on the freedoms of its own citizens.

"We can see Chinese regime trampling [on] the basic human rights of its own citizens," Pompeo said. "We have seen this in Hong Kong, where they need to live up to their promises and commitments and we have seen this in gross human rights violations of ethnic minorities in Xinjiang."

In a scathing attack on China, the US official accused the Chinese Communist Party of trying to force its will on people across the world.

"The Chinese Communist Party is offering its people and the world an entirely different model of governance – it's one in which a Leninist party rules and everyone must think and act according to the will of the Communist elites," he said.

"That's not a future that I want ... and it's not a future that the freedom-loving people of China want," he said.

Pompeo said Beijing is "truly hostile" to the United States.

"Today we're finally realising the degree to which the Chinese Communist Party is truly hostile to the United States and our values," Pompeo told the conservative Hudson Institute in New York.

In the latest hawkish take on China by President Donald Trump's administration, Pompeo said he would deliver a series of speeches in coming months laying out cases against Beijing on areas from ideology to trade to its efforts for influence within the United States.

Pompeo said Beijing was seeking international domination – implicitly rejecting US experts who argue that the communist leaders are fundamentally pragmatic.

At a dinner attended by Henry Kissinger, Pompeo said Washington had long been too easy on China in hopes that it would transform.

"We hesitated and did far less than we should have when China threatened its neighbours like Vietnam and the Philippines and when they claimed the entire South China Sea," he said.

Pompeo nonetheless said that the United States did not seek confrontation but rather still wanted to encourage a more "liberalised" China. (AFP)