“This is partly electioneering,” Max Baucus, a former U.S. ambassador to China and ex-Democratic senator from Montana, told Bloomberg Television. “Clearly China creates a lot of problems for the United States, but this is the wrong way to handle it. If Pompeo thinks he is going to quote change Chinese behavior, he is gravely mistaken. Statements like his and others very much weaken the hands of reformers in China and very much strengthen the hands of hardline hawks in China.”