A senior US official on Tuesday, July 14, likened China's state enterprises to Britain's colonizing East India Company as Washington takes a tougher stance against Beijing in the dispute-rife South China Sea.
"In all our societies, citizens deserve to know the differences between commercial enterprises and instruments of foreign state power," Stilwell said at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.The British East India Company seized control of most of the Indian subcontinent in the guise of trading in tea, cotton, spices and other goods before Britain formally took charge in the mid-19th century.
In the latest rift between the United States and China, Pompeo on Monday sided with the Philippines, Vietnam, and other Southeast Asian nations in rejecting China's vast claims in the South China Sea.