Chinese President Xi Jinping ‘most unpleasant’ I have ever met: Pompeo

Former US secretary of state Mike Pompeo has described Chinese President Xi Jinping as the “most unpleasant” among the dozens of world leaders he met during his tenure.

In his book titled 'Never Give an Inch: Fighting for the America I Love, Pompeo found the Chinese leader to be "dour" and a "quintessential Communist apparatchik" after he claimed that Xi threatened to stop sending PPF kits to America if it kept asking for accountability from Beijing on COVID-19.

"Personally, I thought Xi was dour. While Putin can be funny and mirthful, even while being evil, Xi was not so serious as dead-eyed. I never once saw an unforced smile,” Pompeo wrote in the book.

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“I also found Xi a quintessential Communist apparatchik: heavy in the abstract, light on the issues under discussion, and always eager to impose his views, even while he pretends to be listening to you. He fit the psychological profile of an East German or Soviet Communist I came to study during my Army days,” he notes.

Pompeo claimed that Xi spoke in "hollow tones" and was always searching for words, phrases, and archaic Chinese proverbs of “questionable clarity”.

"My China policy advisor at the State Department, Miles Yu, later told me that CCP leaders in general, and General Secretary Xi in particular, deploy overwrought erudition to play gullible American leaders,” he said.

“Of the dozens of world leaders I met, he was among the most unpleasant. How's that for telling the hard truth? Having now seen the regime personified at the highest level, I was gripped by just how different its leaders were from the Chinese people,” Pompeo said.

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