Instead of “rolling out the red carpet” when Chinese President Xi Jinping arrives in the U.S. next month, Marco Rubio said Friday that American leaders should confront him about his track record of human rights violations and “economic misconduct.”
In a lengthy speech before security experts and members of the press in Charleston, S.C., the Florida senator and Republican presidential candidate detailed an aggressive three-piece agenda for dealing with China: bolster American naval and aerial forces in the South-East Asia region, protect the U.S. economy from China’s injurious economic practices and encourage dissidents fighting for freedom and democratic governance in Beijing and elsewhere.
“President Obama has continued to appease China’s leaders despite their mounting aggression,” Rubio wrote in a Wall Street Journal piece published ahead of his speech. “In addition to his insufficient responses to economic and national security concerns, he has ignored the Chinese government’s mass roundups of human-rights advocates, oppression of religious minorities, detention of political dissidents, ever-tightening controls on the Internet and numerous other human-rights violations.”
“He has hoped that being more open to China would make them a more responsible nation,” Rubio said Friday, adding, “it hasn’t worked.”
According to Rubio, China has become a severe threat to U.S. economic and national security under Jinping’s authoritarian leadership and “is doing everything it can to make the 21st century a Chinese Century.”
“Under Xi Jinping’s rule, China has intensified its campaign to push America out of Asia, denouncing our long-standing alliances with other democracies like Japan and the Philippines, developing weapons that threaten our bases and naval assets, and declaring that Asian affairs should be left to ‘the people of Asia,'” the Florida Republican said.
Rubio was quick to mention the cyber-attack launched by Chinese hackers in June that comprised a significant portion of current and former federal workers’ personal data as a key example of one attempt by China to undermine the U.S.
“In the 21st century, economic security and national security depend on cyber security,” he said. “No longer will China hack our corporate or government servers with ease and without consequence.”
“I will fortify our cyber defenses. I will work with other nations to pressure China to halt its use of commercial espionage as a tool of statecraft and I will coordinate international efforts to identify and punish any Chinese nationals who violate this,” Rubio added.
Rubio also described China’s economic meddling as “a rising threat to our economic interests,” citing Monday’s 8.5 percent drop in the Shanghai Composite Index and the chaos that ensued on Wall Street as an example.
“It was a jarring illustration of how our economy has changed,” the junior senator said. “In the 21st century, what happens across the world can impact American families as much as what happens across town.”
“As President, I would respond to China’s economic misconduct not through aggressive retaliation, which would hurt us as much as them, but by reinforcing our insistence on free markets and free trade,” Rubio said. “This means immediately moving forward with the Trans-Pacific Partnership and other trade agreements that strengthen strategic ties with our partners in Asia.”
“We will not build exclusionary trading blocs, but nor will we allow China to reap the full benefits of American-led commerce unless it fundamentally changes its attitudes and its policies,” he added.
The Florida senator previously promised to invite Cuban and Iranian dissidents to his inauguration if elected president, and on Friday he extended that invitation to freedom fighters in Beijing.
“These will one day be the leaders of a democratic China,” he said. “These are the leaders worthy of a red carpet welcome in Washington, D.C. and giving them that honor will set an example to the world.”
As president, Rubio says he would impose visa bans and asset freezes on Chinese leaders guilty of human rights abuses, call for the release of political prisoners, and encourage the Chinese people to “breach the Great Firewall of China and gain access to news and information online about their country and about the world.”
“Helping the Chinese people achieve freedom and democracy is not just our moral duty as a free people — it will have a profound effect on global prosperity and our security,” he asserted.
Before taking questions from the press, Rubio took a moment to censure his leading democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, for prioritizing a U.S.-China agreement on climate change to holding the country’s leaders accountable for their record of human rights violations.
“We have to put forward a nominee with the experience and record of judgment necessary to take her to task [and] understand the global challenges we face in the 21st century,” he said.
“If I am our party’s nominee, Hillary Clinton will not be able to lecture me on foreign affairs,” Rubio declared. “From Libya to Syria to Ukraine, and yes, to China, I have consistently called for the appropriate courses of action before they were popular.”
