Hucksters do disservice to Washington's diplomacy

Since he was sanctioned by the Chinese government last month for his "long-term terrible performances on issues related to China", Miles Maochun Yu, a US historian and strategist who served as the principle China policy and planning advisor to former US secretary of state Mike Pompeo, has become more active on social media.

Since his sanctioning by Beijing has raised his profile, Yu has been peddling propositions such as a non-existent "Russia-China military alliance" in his attempts to get research funding. He urged the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to expand to the "Indo-Pacific" in response. Which is simply absurd. What Yu seeks is not to avoid a war but start a war.

Born in Anhui province in 1961, Yu moved to the US in 1985 after graduating from Tianjin-based Nankai University with a bachelor's degree in history. Like many other Chinese scholars who arrived in the US in the 1980s, Yu should have sought to promote in-depth exchanges between China and the US and contribute to the healthy development of the Sino-US relations.

However, he found it is easier to obtain fortune and fame by duping the US people who don't know much about China, badmouthing his motherland and catering to the needs of a handful of China-bashing politicians in the US.

And his "business model" finally hit the jackpot during the Donald Trump administration, with Pompeo allowing him to adulterate the US' China policy with his "research findings".

In fact, Yu has no findings or viable works in his field of "military history and modern China" that are recognized by Sinologists in the US.Yu's "business", which is viewed as shameful by most genuine scholars, naturally excludes him from academia as a "political clown" who is always ready to customize his "research findings" for his backers.

Scratching each other's back, Yu and the interest groups he serves had an unwarranted influence on arguably the most important bilateral ties in the world during the Trump administration.

That naturally raises a question about the US policymaking mechanism, if not its political system as a whole. Why can the truly outstanding Sinologists, which the US has no lack of, not secure a seat in the US government policymaking departments today? If the US foreign policy advisory, consultation and research system continues to be a club of such speculative and fake scholars as Yu, what can the country and the world expect of its diplomacy?