China has accused U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo of “outdated Cold War thinking” after the diplomat warned that China posed a fundamental threat to Western democratic freedoms.

Pompeo – who spoke in Germany on the eve of the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall – said the Chinese Communist Party “uses tactics and methods to suppress its own people that would be horrifyingly familiar to former East Germans”.

He added Washington has made clear to Beijing they should “honor their commitment” to the “one country, two systems” policy that allows Hong Kong rights unseen in the mainland.

As Breitbart News reported, Pompeo’s address was titled “The Lessons of 1989: Freedom and Our Future.” He said 30 years after East and West Germany were reunited, authoritarianism is once again rising and it must be challenged by the free world:

﻿

In response Beijing slammed Pompeo’s “baseless malicious attacks” on the Chinese government.

Some figures in the US have “attempted to build an ideological wall between Chinese and foreign enterprises,” Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said Monday at a regular press briefing.

Geng accused Pompeo of ignoring the interest of the American people to pursue personal political goals, and urged him to “abandon his ideological bias and outdated Cold War thinking”.

Pompeo’s visit to Berlin came as Germany prepared to mark three decades since November 9, 1989, when the Berlin Wall came down, ultimately culminating in the collapse of the Communist regime in the east.

His Berlin speech was the latest in a string of hawkish remarks on China.

In October, Pompeo called Beijing “truly hostile” to the United States, and vowed to ramp up pressure on China on multiple fronts.