Florida Republican Sens. Marco Rubio and Rick Scott are both pushing for the U.S. to adopt a more aggressive posture toward China in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Rubio, the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, framed China as the more potent threat to U.S. interests than Russia in a speech Tuesday morning at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank located just blocks away from the Capitol.
Like Russia, China boasts a nuclear arsenal. But unlike Russia — or even the Soviet Union during the Cold War — Rubio argued that China holds unparalleled economic influence both in the U.S. and internationally, which he said makes the threat far greater.
“The greatest threat facing America today — it is the challenge that will define not just this century but my generation and every generation represented here today. That challenge is not climate change. It’s not the pandemic. It’s not the left’s version of social justice. The threat that will define this century is China,” Rubio said in the speech. “And we will need a whole-of-society — not just government — whole-of-society effort to match them.”
Scott has made similar comments in recent weeks, sponsoring a bill last month that would sanction China in the event that it invades Taiwan after Russia invaded Ukraine. Scott hosted a roundtable event focused on China Tuesday afternoon at the Capitol.
In his speech, Rubio criticized President Joe Biden’s administration for discontinuing a China initiative at the Justice Department launched under President Donald Trump for the stated purpose of countering intellectual property theft by the Chinese government.
“Because left-wing activists smeared it as racist, as xenophobic. Of course those are the magic words that get anything canceled,” Rubio said.
But he also took aim at major companies for showing deference to China in advancement of their business interests as a major barrier to confronting the threat, including one of Florida’s biggest employers: Disney.
“Beijing has and continues to deputize American corporations and turn them into their lobbyists,” Rubio said, pointing specifically to Nike and Coca-Cola’s opposition to his bill to ban imports manufactured through forced labor by Uyghurs, a Muslim minority that has faced violent repression in China.
He then noted that Disney filmed the live-action version of “Mulan” in Xinjiang, “the very province where they have these genocide camps,” and thanked local government officials in the film’s credits.
“But apparently they’re outraged that in Florida schools won’t be teaching 5-year-olds about gender identity,” Rubio said, referencing the company’s recent opposition to a Florida bill restricting classroom instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity.
American COMPETES Act
Rubio’s speech came a day after both he and Scott voted against the America COMPETES Act, which he referred to as “the so-called China bill,” a piece of legislation intended to increase U.S. competition with China in a variety of areas, including microchip manufacturing.
The bill passed the Senate with bipartisan support Monday evening by a vote of 68 to 28.
The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, the party’s campaign arm in Senate races, said that Rubio and other Republican senators who opposed the bill had “once again shown they’re refusing to get tough with China, or the big corporations that get rich by keeping prices on working families high — and voters will reject their self-serving politics in November.”
Rubio said Tuesday that the bill makes meaningful investments, but argued that it doesn’t do enough to protect against intellectual property theft.
“It doesn’t build sufficient safeguards to protect taxpayer funded research and industrial investment and it’s because of pressures from universities and industries,” Rubio said. “In essence, it pours billions of dollars … into activities that the Chinese are stealing now except with less money. Now they’ll just have access to more to steal.”
Scott also outlined his opposition to the bill to reporters last week, arguing that the bill’s language could not ensure a return of investment for U.S. taxpayers.
Rick Scott’s Roundtable
Following Rubio’s speech, Scott presided over a roundtable on “the Threat of Communist China,” which featured human rights activists and national security experts.
“I’ve been warning my colleagues that communist China has chosen — they’ve chosen — to be our enemy and that we have entered into a new cold war with Beijing,” Scott said during his opening remarks.
Scott’s panel included Enes Kanter Freedom, a professional basketball player who has been outspoken in his criticism of human rights abuses in China after a long history of activism focused on his native Turkey.
Freedom pointed to an interaction with a parent at a youth basketball camp as the impetus for him broadening the focus of his activism beyond Turkey to include China and other totalitarian regimes.
“One of the parents called me out in front of everybody and said, ‘How can you call yourself a human rights activist when your Muslim brothers and sisters are getting tortured and raped every day in concentration camps in China?’ I was shocked. I couldn’t say anything. I just turned around and said, ‘I promise I’m going to get back to you,’” he recounted Tuesday.
Freedom, a center who has played for five NBA teams since 2011, has been without a team since February when the Houston Rockets waived his contract immediately after acquiring him in a multi-player trade with the Boston Celtics.
Freedom’s supporters have pointed to his activism regarding China as the reason why the Rockets cut him and other NBA teams won’t sign him as the league seeks to expand its brand in the world’s most populous nation.
Rubio invoked basketball toward the end of his Heritage Foundation event, responding to an audience question about whether capitalism had failed to bring political change to China. He pointed to China’s market controls and disregard for intellectual property rights.
“That’s not capitalism. That’s cheating. That’s like allowing one team to play basketball with five people and the other team to have 10. And then people argue, well, you’re against basketball. No, I’m not. I’m against 10-to-5 basketball,” Rubio said to laughter and applause.
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