News

Huawei’s Fall Serves as a Blueprint for U.S.-China Policy
By U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL)
October 2, 2021
Real Clear Politics
 
Four years ago, Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) and I began briefing major American companies, universities, and others on how the Chinese Communist Party used firms like Huawei, ZTE, Alibaba, and Tencent to infiltrate and ultimately undermine our institutions.
 
At the time, Huawei was a titan of the smartphone industry, shipping more phones globally than any company besides Samsung. Today, Huawei is falling off the map thanks to a concerted effort by the United States and crippling sanctions imposed during the Trump administration.
 
…Huawei’s stunning fall from an unstoppable juggernaut to one struggling to survive should serve as a blueprint for how American policymakers should approach China.
 
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It took years of effort – often to the ridicule of mainstream media, industry elites, our allies, and even some in Congress – to focus public policy on the national security threat posed by companies like Huawei. Two years later, we are finally seeing the results. The challenge now is to move forward the policies and initiatives that strengthen Americans’ digital security and the security of our nation.
 
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One of the most obvious places to start is Beijing’s continued exploitation of our capital markets. Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) and I took a step in that direction in 2020 when President Trump signed our Holding Foreign Companies Accountable Act into law… 
 
We should also do more to confront the Chinese Communist Party’s ongoing genocide of Uyghurs and other predominantly Muslim groups in Xinjiang. The Trump administration’s genocide determination was a good first step. Other nations should do the same, and President Joe Biden should personally endorse my Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, which passed the Senate unanimously earlier this year.
 
Similarly, we should place sanctions on the leadership of the Chinese Academy of Sciences – the world’s largest research organization – in response to Beijing blocking a real investigation into the origins of COVID-19.
 
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For more than a decade, China’s rise and America’s decline were viewed as inevitable. It led Wall Street, Hollywood, and Silicon Valley to slide America to the back burner and pander to the Chinese Communist Party. And many times, Washington simply didn’t care. Thankfully, we are now coming to grips with the consequences of overreliance on communist China. Huawei’s fall is simply the first step in a decades-long effort to correct our lopsided relationship with China and secure a new American century for our great people.
 
Rest the rest.