Editor's note: The following article is taken from the Chinese-language opinion column "The Real Point."

"No other country in the world calls it the 'China virus' or 'Wuhan virus' or whatever racist name Trump and Pompeo use, which kind of shows it's not some geopolitical strategy to call it that," tweeted former U.S. Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes when talking about U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's attempts to stigmatize China at a G7 meeting.

As a political figure actively promoting ideas against China in the Trump administration, Pompeo has been playing the stigmatization card time and again. He has publicly labeled the coronavirus as the "Wuhan virus," accused the Communist Party of China of being "the central threat of our times," and attempted to include the aforementioned racist label in a joint statement of the G7 foreign ministers meeting. Using numerous occasions to attack and defame China through the creation and dissemination of "conspiracy theories," Pompeo's Cold War mentality and ideological prejudice is causing serious disruption to the global cooperation fighting the COVID-19 pandemic.

Some analysts have speculated that Pompeo is intentionally branding himself as a hardliner with China in the hope of wooing special interest groups that may grant him the political capital for a future shot at a Senate seat or even the presidency. As America's top diplomat in the face of a global pandemic, Pompeo is seeking his own political gains at the expense of U.S. public interest. At the bottom of this is a wanton disregard for American lives, and this is not going to make the U.S. epidemic control efforts any easier.

As the pandemic situation escalates around the world, there is also a demand for stigma reduction and global cooperation. U.S. President Donald Trump has taken lately a noticeably more active position on international collaboration. In his call with Chinese President Xi Jinping, Trump said that he would take a personal role in ensuring the two nations overcome distractions and focus on coronavirus cooperation. During the recent G20 video summit, world leaders also called tackling the pandemic and its intertwined health, social and economic impacts, their absolute priority.

It is time for people like Pompeo to stop weaponizing the fear of coronavirus and using it to stigmatize China.

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