US Senator Marco Rubio, US president-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for secretary of state, on Wednesday said that a “dangerous” China cheated its way to superpower status, as he vowed to ramp up support to deter an invasion of Taiwan.
Rubio laid out his worldview to fellow senators at a confirmation hearing that took place just as Israel and Hamas agreed to a ceasefire in their 15-month war, a long-sought goal of US President Joe Biden’s outgoing administration.
Rubio, who is expected to secure confirmation easily, described China as “the most potent and dangerous near-peer adversary this nation has ever faced” and warned of drastic impacts if the US does not act.
Photo: AFP
“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 or not — everything from the blood pressure medicine we take to what movies we get to watch,” Rubio said.
He vowed to ramp up the defenses of Taiwan to prevent a “cataclysmic military intervention.”
“We need to wrap our head around the fact that unless something dramatic changes, like an equilibrium [between China and Taiwan], where they conclude that the costs of intervening in Taiwan are too high, we’re going to have to deal with this before the end of this decade,” Rubio said.
Trump had raised questions during his campaign over Taiwan by insisting it does not pay enough for its own defense — similar criticism he has made of NATO allies.
Rubio distanced himself from talk of exiting NATO, but said the US needed to ask whether to retain “the primary defense role” in the alliance or be a “backstop to aggression,” with Europeans taking more responsibility.
A staunch backer of Ukraine after its invasion by Russia nearly three years ago, Rubio has allied with Trump in promising “bold diplomacy” that would require concessions on both sides.
“This war has to end, and I think it should be the official policy of the United States that we want to see it end,” Rubio said, a shift from Biden’s approach of supporting Ukraine through victory.
Rubio also backed the diplomacy that reached the Gaza ceasefire, but made it clear that he would staunchly back Israel, after Biden’s occasional criticism of the toll to civilians.
“How can any nation-state on the planet coexist side by side with a group of savages like Hamas?” he said.
Rubio rejected a key tenet of Biden’s foreign policy — prioritizing a rules-based, US-led “liberal world order” — in favor of Trump’s belief in “America First.”
“The post-war global order is not just obsolete; it is now a weapon being used against us,” he said.
“We welcomed the Chinese Communist Party into this global order, and they took advantage of all its benefits, but they ignored all its obligations and responsibilities,” Rubio said.
“Instead, they have lied, cheated, hacked and stolen their way to global superpower status, at our expense,” he said.
‘ABUSE OF POWER’: Lee Chun-yi allegedly used a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a pet grooming salon and take his wife to restaurants, media reports said Control Yuan Secretary-General Lee Chun-yi (李俊俋) resigned on Sunday night, admitting that he had misused a government vehicle, as reported by the media. Control Yuan Vice President Lee Hung-chun (李鴻鈞) yesterday apologized to the public over the issue. The watchdog body would follow up on similar accusations made by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and would investigate the alleged misuse of government vehicles by three other Control Yuan members: Su Li-chiung (蘇麗瓊), Lin Yu-jung (林郁容) and Wang Jung-chang (王榮璋), Lee Hung-chun said. Lee Chun-yi in a statement apologized for using a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a
Taiwan yesterday denied Chinese allegations that its military was behind a cyberattack on a technology company in Guangzhou, after city authorities issued warrants for 20 suspects. The Guangzhou Municipal Public Security Bureau earlier yesterday issued warrants for 20 people it identified as members of the Information, Communications and Electronic Force Command (ICEFCOM). The bureau alleged they were behind a May 20 cyberattack targeting the backend system of a self-service facility at the company. “ICEFCOM, under Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party, directed the illegal attack,” the warrant says. The bureau placed a bounty of 10,000 yuan (US$1,392) on each of the 20 people named in
The High Court yesterday found a New Taipei City woman guilty of charges related to helping Beijing secure surrender agreements from military service members. Lee Huei-hsin (李慧馨) was sentenced to six years and eight months in prison for breaching the National Security Act (國家安全法), making illegal compacts with government employees and bribery, the court said. The verdict is final. Lee, the manager of a temple in the city’s Lujhou District (蘆洲), was accused of arranging for eight service members to make surrender pledges to the Chinese People’s Liberation Army in exchange for money, the court said. The pledges, which required them to provide identification
INDO-PACIFIC REGION: Royal Navy ships exercise the right of freedom of navigation, including in the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea, the UK’s Tony Radakin told a summit Freedom of navigation in the Indo-Pacific region is as important as it is in the English Channel, British Chief of the Defence Staff Admiral Tony Radakin said at a summit in Singapore on Saturday. The remark came as the British Royal Navy’s flagship aircraft carrier, the HMS Prince of Wales, is on an eight-month deployment to the Indo-Pacific region as head of an international carrier strike group. “Upholding the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, and with it, the principles of the freedom of navigation, in this part of the world matters to us just as it matters in the