Former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich joined "Fox & Friends" Tuesday to react to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen bowing to a Chinese official and stressed the importance of the gesture. Gingrich said Yellen's decision to bow in Beijing sends a "powerful signal" to the Chinese Communist Party and comes on the heels of a similar gesture from Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
NEWT GINGRICH: In the case of Yellen, I cannot overstate for our audience: in the context of Chinese history, a person who kowtows, who bows to the other person is indicating clearly their inferiority. They're saying you're the superior person, I'm the inferior person. For the American secretary of the Treasury to go to Beijing to bow to a Chinese communist dictatorship is incredible. And you have to assume it's because they're just utterly incompetent at understanding the real world. I always tell people, liberals are folks who watched ‘The Lion King’ and thought it was a documentary. And they really do believe lions and zebras sing and dance together. And we can't get them to understand that lions eat zebras. The Chinese are not Yellen's friends. You'll notice he didn't bow back. And by the way, you had a very similar thing happen when Secretary of State Blinken went over because he walked all the way across the stage to see Xi Jinping, who stood waiting for the supplicant, the American, to come to him. And in Chinese culture, in all of Asian culture, these kind of symbolic events are very real and they send very powerful signals.
Yellen made an unusual gesture Saturday when she bowed to a Chinese official during her visit in Beijing.
Footage shows Yellen approaching Vice Premier He Lifeng — her Chinese counterpart — and bowing multiple times while enthusiastically shaking his hand.
Former White House staffer Bradley Blakeman, who served during President George W. Bush's administration, told the New York Post that the gesture was unseemly.
"Never, ever, ever…an American official does not bow. It looks like she’s been summoned to the principal’s office, and that’s exactly the optics the Chinese love," Blakeman said.
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Fox News' Andrea Vacchiano contributed to this report.
