WASHINGTON - China is the “biggest threat” to U.S. security today and is seeking a world where America depends on it for economic necessities and bends to its will, Sen. Marco Rubio told fellow senators Wednesday ahead of his expected confirmation as secretary of state.
President-elect Donald Trump nominated his former rival to serve as his top diplomat shortly after his Nov. 5 election victory, and the Florida senator was quickly endorsed by a number of his Senate colleagues.
The Senate confirmation hearing on Wednesday was dominated by questions about the direction the Trump administration would take on the “axis” of China, Russia and Iran.
But Rubio saved his most strident criticism for Beijing, which he said was America’s “biggest threat.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, he said, would get “some chapters” in any written history of the 21st Century, but it would be U.S.-China ties that fill out “the bulk of that book.”
So far, he added, China has been banking many successes.
“If we stay on the road we’re on right now, in less than 10 years, virtually everything that matters to us in life will depend on whether China will allow us to have it -– everything from the blood pressure medicine we take to what movies we get to watch,” Rubio said.
That was “unacceptable,” he argued, because Beijing wants to see America’s economy “almost entirely dependent” on China’s in order to make Americans more pliant to Beijing’s geopolitical demands.
“The Communist Party of China … is the most potent and dangerous near peer adversary this nation has ever confronted,” Rubio said.
“They have elements that the Soviet Union never possessed. They are a technological adversary and competitor, an industrial competitor, an economic competitor, a geopolitical competitor, a scientific competitor now in every realm,” he added. “It’s an extraordinary challenge.”
Collegial atmosphere
Rubio faced few critical questions from his colleagues, providing a sharp contrast with the tense hearings in the same building a day prior for Trump’s nominee for defense secretary, Fox News host Pete Hegseth, who was grilled by Democrats at each opportunity.
On Tuesday, Sen. Tammy Duckworth, a Democrat from Illinois, forthrightly told Hegseth he was “not qualified” for a Cabinet position after he, among other things, failed to name a member of the ASEAN bloc or any military agreements he might end up negotiating.
Like many of the senators on Wednesday, Duckworth was collegial with Rubio and recounted her warm friendship with him.
Rubio, she said, had personally intervened with the Republican leadership of the Senate when she was first elected to the chamber as a new mother and wanted to carry her child to the floor for votes.
“I want to thank you for that kindness,” Duckworth said, recounting how she was surprised Rubio knew who she was after he ran across the Senate floor to offer his support when she was first elected in 2016.
“I think what I exactly said is, ‘What’s the big deal? This place is already full of babies,’” Rubio responded to laughter.
Duckworth added she was “distinctly unimpressed” that Hegseth “could not mention a single nation in ASEAN.” She did not ask the same question of Rubio, instead asking him how he would engage with the 10-nation bloc in Southeast Asia.
Still, Rubio worked in a passing answer in his response.
“If you look at the continental [ASEAN] – Laos, Myanmar, Cambodia, because of their geographic presence, because of history, they lean a little bit more in the Chinese direction,” he said. “It would be a mistake for us to make it a condition of our engagement with ASEAN to say you must pick a side [and say], ‘Are you with them, or are you with us?’”
Uyghur genocide
Asked by Sen. Jeff Merkley, a Democrat from Oregon, about whether he would use U.S. influence to promote human rights in Southeast Asian countries America counts as allies, Rubio said he would.
Merkley pointed to the 48 Uyghurs who escaped what the U.S. government calls a “genocide” in China but have since been arrested in Thailand with Beijing seeking their return. The senator asked if Rubio would reach out to Bangkok to try to prevent their return to China.
“Yes,” Rubio said, “and the good news is that Thailand is actually a very strong U.S. partner, a strong historical ally as well, and so that is an area where I think diplomacy could really achieve results, because of how important that relationship and how close it is.”
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He added that the treatment of Uyghurs in China was not “some obscure issue” that should be on the sidelines of U.S.-China ties.
“These are people who are basically being rounded up because of their ethnicity and religion, and they are being put into camps. They’re being put into what they call re-education centers. They’re being stripped of their identity. Their children’s names are being changed,” Rubio said.
“It’s one of the most horrifying things that’s ever happened,” he said, “They’re being put into forced labor – literally slave labor.”
Transition to diplomat
If confirmed by the Senate, which is expected early next week amid bipartisan support from his colleagues in the Senate, Rubio would become the first sitting U.S. secretary of state to have been sanctioned by Beijing, ostensibly preventing him from travelling to China.
He told the confirmation hearing on Wednesday his views would not change once in office but his approach may become more diplomatic.
The senator said he would engage China earnestly on its treatment of Uyghurs – as with its “destabilizing” plans for Taiwan and the seas around the Philippines, which he said threatens an outbreak of conflict with U.S. forces – but was conscious of his new responsibilities.
“Indeed, I’ve been strongly worded in my views of China. Let me just point out they’ve said mean things about me too,” he said, explaining he was prepared to begin “engaging” China in “mature and prudent conversation” about the issues where the two countries disagree.
“I would expect that they .. are also mature and prudent practitioners of foreign policy,” Rubio said. “It is in their interest, our interest [and] in the interest of the world, for two great powers to be able to communicate.”
Edited by Malcolm Foster.