Republican Senator Marco Rubio of Florida was on hand at a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on Wednesday when he sounded the alarm on the dangers of American businesses' deep reliance on the Chinese Communist Party. The 50 year old senator said that it's "time to wake up" to the fact that the U.S.' "corporate lust for profits" will be used by China against America.
"U.S. corporations are so desperate to have access to the Chinese market that they'll lead costly boycotts in an American state that passes a law that they don't like," Sen. Rubio argued during the hearing, as reported by Fox News. "American companies have actually fired Americans who live in America for saying or writing something that China doesn't like."
The Florida senator also highlighted how several American businesses fired their own employees, removed clothing and other products from U.S. markets, and cut ties with other States-based businesses just to appease the CCP. Sen. Rubio said that China is a dominant threat to the U.S. more than just due to corporate control but because what is going on between the U.S. and China is the "biggest illegal wealth transfer from one nation to another in the history of mankind."
Sen. Rubio pressed that the "long arm of China" is no longer a "futuristic threat" because the communist state has been "stealing between $300 and $600 billion a year of American technology and intellectual property." National Review reported in July that according to the U.S. Department of Justice, up to 80% of its economic-espionage cases have in fact involved China.
The report calls for "stronger safeguards than even the Senate currently includes" because without those in place, China will be able to gain access to technology developed from U.S. research, "subsidize its deployment, and actually bring harm to American companies and workers."
Furthermore, the report reveals that "almost no Chinese beneficiary of illegal IP acquisition has faced even the mildest of consequences (that are publicly known)." This is why Sen. Rubio has filed two bills on Wednesday that would prohibit American banks from funding projects controlled by the Chinese government. According to ChinaAid, the senator is worried that the Chinese already have so much "more control over what Americans can say, what we can hear, what we can read, what we can watch than any foreign government has ever had in our history."
"China's actions, in manufacturing, technology, trade, or cybersecurity, directly affect millions of Americans every day, in a way you can't say about Russia or any other country," Foreign Policy reported in July. Because of this, the Biden administration is looking to make confronting China the center of his foreign policy. Kurt Campell of the National Security Council had even declared in May that the period of "engagement [with Beijing] has come to an end."
America is now taking a more firm stance against China, especially amidst the ongoing Uyghur human rights issues and the COVID pandemic. The Biden administration should, however, take a harder stance against China's abuses - at least at par with or even better than the Trump administration did.
