Robert Daly, a former diplomat with extensive experience in China, including translating for Nixon's former national security adviser and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, calls Pompeo's view of the Chinese people and their hostility toward the government in Beijing "a dangerous illusion."

"In confronting China, we're not dealing with a wholly good people who have been 'imprisoned' or 'enslaved' by a purely malign party," Daly, now director of the Kissinger Institute on China and the U.S. at The Wilson Center think tank, said in an emailed statement. "Chinese are often frustrated by a government [that] ignores their wishes, moves too slowly or moves in the wrong direction, but the available evidence is that, as citizens of the PRC, most Chinese people feel proud and enabled, not constrained."

Pompeo described a Chinese people that he believes are broadly oppressed by the central government, and heralded dissidents - including some in attendance - saying the U.S. must "engage and empower the Chinese people - a dynamic, freedom-loving people who are completely distinct from the Chinese Communist Party."

Most Chinese people support their government most of the time, Daly said, citing 33 years of experience working in the country. The support is partly due to propaganda, but also economic progress, he said.

"China is not a land of innocent captives and evil master trolls. U.S.-China relations are not a children's story," Daly said. "In China, the United States faces something far more formidable than Secretary Pompeo suggests: China is a vast, complex, wealthy, ambitious, aggrieved nation. Americans should face this challenge squarely and stop blinding themselves with morally flattering fables."