Executive Session

Floor Speech

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Mr. RUBIO. Mr. President, I don't know of any topic that is more important for our country than the relationship between the United States and China.

I am a big fan of history. I love to read about history. I think one of the best ways to understand the future is to understand the past. It strikes me that, at some point in the future, someone will write a book about the 21st century, and I think that book will have mention of a number of the things that consumed our time in political debate. I believe the central issue globally that will define the 21st century is the relationship between the United States and China, in which direction it heads.

Let me say at the outset that China is destined to be what it already is becoming: a rich, important, and powerful nation. That in and of itself should not be threatening. It is a reality. It is one that I think holds promise, to the extent that a rich and powerful China is a responsible stakeholder in the affairs of the world.

I think there is another truth, and that is, what is developing today is an incredibly serious imbalance between the United States and China on trade and commerce, increasingly on diplomacy, and potentially-- eventually--militarily and geopolitical.

So when I come today to speak about China, it is not simply in the context of our current trade tensions, which is a part of a much broader issue. The fact of the matter is that this is the way we should view it because this is the way the Communist Party of China views it. The truth is that they view our trade tensions as an inevitable blip in their long-term plan to supplant the United States of America as the world's dominant political, military, and economic power.

Now, it is understandable why many Americans would feel uneasy at the prospect of being supplanted by China. First of all, they have seen so many of our industries that once thrived in our towns and cities weakened or leave altogether, and they have read about the grotesque violation of human rights and dignity of people and China's Communist Party's persecution of Christians, Muslims, and other religious minorities.

The sad fact is that we have come to this realization far too late in this city. For many years, many of the policy elites across the political spectrum turned a blind eye to this growing threat. There was this notion that, once China became rich and prosperous, they would become like us. It is as if somehow economic prosperity, in the sense and in the way China is achieving it, automatically leads to supporting values such as the ones that we hold dear. But the fact is that we can no longer ignore the reality that this is not the direction that China is headed, and it has implications for our country and the world.

Our country, our workers, and families can no longer afford elected officials in this city who turn a blind eye to the seriousness of this challenge. At this point, given all the information before us and the trends that have clearly emerged, ignorance on this matter is no longer an excuse, and, frankly, the Communist Party of China is no longer hiding its ambition about what this is all about.

I am not asking you to believe my words on this. I just ask that you believe them, that you take their words seriously. That is why I come here to point to a speech last week by Huang Qifan, who is a former Central Committee member and recently retired as the vice chair of the National People's Congress Financial and Economic Affairs Committee. He showed us, by the way, what passes as modernization within the Chinese Communist Party.

In the speech he gave, he didn't speak in the typical Communist jargon. He doesn't invoke abstract theories or laws of history or in any way hold back. He speaks with a frankness that we should actually be grateful for because it enlightens us and hopefully propels us to take action. To Huang, as he makes very clear, the trade war that is ongoing is a fight to the death, an inevitable outcome in a fight between two systems.

Paraphrasing Mao Zedong, he urged Chinese businesspeople to shed their illusions and prepare for struggle. China is the rising power. The United States is the aging hegemon, and China's rise will be sustained.

Huang declared, ``At this time, the socialist road with Chinese characteristics is obviously more competitive. . . . than the U.S. economic system.'' Such confident words are not just his; they emanate from the very top. Just after gaining power, their current President, apparently for life, Xi Jinping, told the party it is ``inevitable that the superiority of our socialist system will be increasingly apparent.''

The United States, according to Huang in his speech, cannot make partners and cannot make space for others in the world. Rather, we are stuck. We are stuck in a situation in which China must fight the United States either economically or militarily to find its place in the world.

Throughout his speech, by the way, he points to various events in the U.S. and the Western world that is evidence of the claims that he makes. He points to the financial crisis, to the ballooning deficits, and to what he terms political instability. In very clear language, he says that these are problems that ``capitalism can't avoid''--that is his quote--but the Chinese system can through central guidance. ``This is our institutional advantage,'' he argues.

Embedded in his speech, there are two themes. The first is a confidence in the inevitability of China's rise and its conflict with the United States. Closely related to it is a second theme, and that is an appeal to the rest of the world to follow in the Chinese authoritarian model, or, as they call it, socialism with Chinese characteristics. In their telling, it is clearly a superior model to ours.

The time has come for America and our allies, who value freedom and liberty and free enterprise, democracy, human rights, and the dignity of all people--the time has come for us to eagerly confront this assertion. Unfortunately, there are too many in the Western world and in the free world that refuse to see the challenges, indeed, the threat that is posed by the Communist Party and China's vision of the world in the future.

Rather than discuss the technical threat posed by an entity like Huawei, I want to articulate the threat in China's Communist Party's words, the threat in their own words, as Qifan said last week: ``Our currency will become the world currency.''

Understand the implications of this stated goal. China's aim is to use economic power to displace the United States of America and the role it has played in the world since the end of the Second World War. China's message to the world is that its industries, its workers, and its politics will be more productive than ours. The Chinese Communist Party says to foreign countries, to investors, and to businesses that the long-term play to keep their economies growing is by partnering with them, not partnering with us.

Some may say, What is the big deal about that? Let's just take care of our own problems. Here is the big deal. Here is what it would mean for Americans in real terms. If the world heads in the direction they advocate, it would mean lower wages for you, it would mean homes and mortgages that are unaffordable, and it would mean a world where what you can say and do abroad but also at home is increasingly dictated by the Chinese Communist Party and its benefactors in the United States and elsewhere.

If you don't believe me, just realize that already major motion pictures produced in Hollywood are censored--censored, even as they are played in the United States because those movies will not have access to Chinese movie theaters. We have already seen multiple American companies have to apologize, take content off the internet, and change T-shirts that they sell at stores because they offend the Communist Party of China and are going to be cut off from selling to that market. It is already happening. It will happen at a much more accelerated pace.

By the way, we have also seen news outlets in some places have to cut back and censor what they say. We have had a television program in a major American network take out content from a program for fear of being censored in the vast Chinese market. Beyond that, the new companies, the new technologies, the improved standards of living, which the United States has always relied on to prove the superiority of our way of life, will also no longer exist.

Indeed, some of these predictions are already happening. The economic growth, the prosperity, and the stability that marks Americans' shared memory of the last century appear to be increasingly absent from this one. Simply put, the Chinese Communist Party believes that the 20th century, which was termed the American Century, was an anomaly, and they believe that they alone have mastered the scientific laws of history, so democracy must stand aside and give way.

We should clearly understand that the Communist Party of China's mission, a mission they term ``national rejuvenation'' of Chinese power and China's prominent place on the world stage, means supplanting our values and our way of life. As Xi Jinping explained 2 years ago, this goal is the original aspiration and mission of the party.

What is our model? Well, it is incumbent upon us as Americans and as leaders and our democratic allies around the world to make the case that our model is the superior. It is incumbent upon us to make the case on behalf of our model just as aggressively as an authoritarian China is making their case for socialism with Chinese characteristics. Our leadership must also be one that respects human dignity, that defends our interests and religious liberty, democracy and human rights, and the rule of law, which means consistently sticking up for nations committed to these same ideals and standing with people who are fighting for these and being crushed by totalitarianism anywhere in the world.

By the way, in the 20th century and the 21st century, American leadership brought peace. After the carnage of the first half of the last century, the United States has led the world to avoid open great power conflict, and it meant historically little bloodshed and deep international stability compared to previous eras.

The international system that America helped craft and lead comes with a promise of multilateral security, and that is why we must remain wholly committed to protecting our allies. We spared no cost to help them rebuild to defend themselves and to protect the dignity of their citizens. The Chinese Communist Party, on the other hand, cannot conceive of a world that is not driven by status and hierarchy. They are not partners, and they view no one as partners. They view them as vassal states. So this progress, even to someone like Huang Qifan, is a hidden plot to suppress others.

Such cynicism, by the way, reveals more about the Chinese Communist Party than it does about us or the failure of American efforts to offer a helping hand to China in exchange for modernization. To the Chinese Communist Party, power serves no purpose but to strengthen the party's rule and to spread its influence around the world.

And for them, those who deviate from the party's expectations deserve to be sent to forced labor camps where they toil on the party's behalf and where mass surveillance is a necessary safeguard against deviants whose only crime is to want a private civic life.

As part of making the case for our model, we must continue to make the case as to why China is an untrustworthy partner in any endeavor, whether it is a nation-state project, in an industrial capacity, or financial integration. They have a neocolonial project, the Belt and Road Initiative, which follows a very consistent playbook: Approach nations with promises of lucrative state projects, exploit corruption, bleed those nations dry, and then hijack their domestic infrastructure. In Sri Lanka, what it meant was the de facto takeover of wide swathes of their political system after a project sputtered and Beijing seized the port.

Beijing is ultimately an untrustworthy partner in international commitments. We have seen this repeatedly in the Asia-Pacific where they have flagrantly violated international agreements and obligations in Hong Kong and Taiwan. We see it right off the coast of Vietnam and the Philippines, where Beijing is literally building artificial islands to substantiate ludicrous territorial claims.

Chinese leaders have long claimed to never seek hegemony, and yet the bullying of their neighbors, they justify it, and they justify it on the grounds that China deserves respect because of its power and position. Doing business in China is not just like here or anywhere else. It is not business between two private companies. It means doing business with companies backed by, sponsored by, and protected by the Chinese Communist Party.

Their economy is purposely opaque, and Chinese companies, many of which are state-owned or state-directed, are tools used by the Chinese Communist Party to further their mercantilist goals.

The telecommunications company that we have heard of so often, Huawei, is just one example. Nations that have naively partnered with Huawei on 5G have exposed vital technological infrastructure to Beijing's surveillance state, a partnership that Beijing has shown it will readily exploit.

The bottom line is that China, no matter what, will continue to play a prominent role in the future of our world; and frankly, we should welcome a growing, thriving China, but one that plays by the rules.

Today's China, governed by the Chinese Communist Party, is not playing by any rules. It is a predatory state in nature, and it actively seeks to supplant not just the United States but a world order committed to democracy, human rights, and the dignity of all.

Since their induction into the World Trade Organization in 2001, China has shown itself to be anything but a responsible global partner. This is a dangerous recipe for conflict, and that is what China's leaders are preparing for. Xi put the party on notice in 2013, saying that China ``must diligently prepare for a long period of cooperation and of conflict'' with capitalist democracies.

If anything, the intervening years have strengthened this conviction. Huang told business leaders that Americans ``want your life.'' He calls it an illusion that ``some small amount of money'' would resolve the trade war.

``We do not want to fight but are not afraid to fight,'' Huang concluded, once again quoting Mao.

China clearly sees this moment--these decades, really--as their opportunity to supplant America from its global leadership role. Conflict, armed or otherwise, is an inevitable byproduct of that progression.

America, as Huang noted, has been the ``world's leader for decades,'' and we have used that power to build an international system that prioritizes fundamental human rights, open democratic governance, and liberal economies, all the things that the Communist Party of China believes represents weakness.

So we must be absolutely clear as to what that means. If China becomes the world's dominant economic power, they will become the world's dominant military power; they will become the world's dominant financial power; and they will become the world's dominant cultural power. Given their critique--and I would say disdain--of our system, we can expect that a future such as that will look much different than the reality we live in now.

If China supplants America in the West, the world that our children will inherit will be nothing like the one we grew up in and know. Instead of exploiting China's brand of authoritarianism country by country, as they do now, China will be positioned to reorient the entire globe, the application of the party's governance at home applied on a global scale to the way countries interact with one another.

Let me close with the prophetic words of a Chinese dissident, Wei Jingsheng. In his testimony before Congress in the year 2000, against and in opposition to China's ascension to the WTO, he said:

If the United States will not fight the world's largest tyranny politically, then inevitably it will have to fight it economically, and eventually, militarily. Therefore, the only way to preserve peace and freedom begins by comprehending democracy's greatest enemy, and countering it effectively.

Blissful ignorance is no longer an option. We cannot overlook the obvious signs in favor of near-term economic gains. The world has reached a crossroads, one in which our inability to act will usher in a Chinese century, and that will have disastrous consequences.
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Mr. RUBIO.

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