China on Monday accused Mike Pompeo of "outdated Cold War thinking" after the US Secretary of State warned against a Chinese threat to Western freedoms.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 that Washington has made clear to Beijing that they should "honour their commitment" to the "one country, two systems" policy that allows Hong Kong rights unseen in the mainland.
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interest of the American people to pursue personal political goals, and urged him to "abandon his ideological bias and outdated Cold War thinking".
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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.
Pompeo said on Friday that the United States and its allies should "defend what was so hard-won... in 1989" and "recognise we are in a competition of values with unfree nations".
His Berlin speech was the latest in a string of hawkish remarks on China by the Secretary of State.
In October, Pompeo called Beijing "truly hostile" to the United States, and vowed to ramp up pressure on China on multiple fronts.