US ambassador to China Branstad is leaving post, suggests US Secretary of State Pompeo

Early on Monday, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo claimed that the US Ambassador to China Terry Branstad was leaving his post soon.

Branstad, 73, was once a governor of Iowa, and no clear reasons have been put out for this sudden departure.

Currently, the relationship between US and China is strained at best. This is over issues of bilateral trade, and the US becoming more wary of handing over data to Chinese companies, claiming they were feeding the data to China’s Communist Party. The COVID-19 pandemic has also strained relations between both the countries.

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The US embassy has not officially confirmed his departure yet.

"I thank Ambassador Terry Branstad for his more than three years of service to the American people as U.S. Ambassador to the People's Republic of China," Pompeo tweeted.

"Ambassador Branstad has contributed to rebalancing U.S.-China relations so that it is results-oriented, reciprocal, and fair," he added.

CNN reported that Branstad was leaving the post before the upcoming November presidential elections in the US, in which Democrat Biden and Republican Trump are rivals.

China also had only good things to say about Branstad, once calling him an “old friend of the Chinese people.”.

President Xi Jinping had visited Iowa decades ago, whereby Branstad first forged ties with him.

Last week, China’s People’s Daily had refused to publish an article by Branstad, which incited a war of words among the two countries on press freedom.

Wang Wenbin, the spokesperson for China’s foreign ministry in a news conference said that they had not received a notice about Branstad leaving yet.