\n<\/p>\n
For most high-ranking diplomats, a misprinted nameplate would be a minor annoyance or a subtle dig. For Marco Rubio, it\u2019s a victory.<\/p>\n
When the Secretary of State joined President Donald Trump for Thursday\u2019s bilateral meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, his last name was slightly misspelled. The reason? Beijing has twice sanctioned Rubio and effectively barred him from entering the country. But Rubio is America\u2019s top diplomat, and Trump would not have undertaken such a high-stakes state visit without him. So, the Chinese Communist Party devised a linguistic workaround to allow Rubio entry without formally lifting the sanctions.<\/p>\n
Chinese Embassy spokesman Liu Pengyu said this week that the sanctions targeted Rubio\u2019s \u201cwords and deeds when he served as a U.S. senator concerning China.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to Garrett Exner, those words and deeds comprise a \u201cremarkably clear-eyed\u201d assessment of the CCP\u2019s faults.<\/p>\n
\u201cLikely because of his Cuban background, Rubio sees communism for the evil it is and has no issue calling it out,\u201d Exner, a fellow at the Hudson Institute, told The Daily Wire. \u201cIt is a win for President Trump that he forced China\u2019s hand in changing their own rules to bring his Secretary of State.\u201d<\/p>\n
As a senator, Rubio was a leading critic of Beijing\u2019s treatment of the Uyghur minority in the Xinjiang region and an outspoken supporter of pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong. For that and more, China brought the hammer down on Rubio in 2020 \u2014 something the then-Florida senator met with humor.<\/p>\n
\u201cLast month China banned me,\u201d Rubio wrote at the time. \u201cToday they sanctioned me. I don\u2019t want to be paranoid but I am starting to think they don\u2019t like me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rubio\u2019s joking tone in no way belies an unserious approach to China. While traveling to China aboard Air Force One, Rubio described Beijing as America\u2019s top geopolitical rival and warned<\/a> that it seeks to displace the United States as the world\u2019s dominant power.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s both our top political challenge geopolitically and it\u2019s also the most important relationship for us to manage,\u201d Rubio said. \u201cIt\u2019s a big powerful country and it\u2019s going to continue to grow.\u201d<\/p>\n Rubio added that the United States and China will inevitably have conflicting interests but argued the relationship must still be managed carefully to avoid military conflict.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re going to have interests of ours that are going to be in conflict with interests of theirs; to avoid wars and maintain peace and stability in the world, we\u2019re gonna have to manage those,\u201d Rubio said.<\/p>\n Years earlier, Rubio contrasted China with Russia, arguing that Chinese ambitions posed the more serious long-term threat.<\/p>\n \u201cUnder Putin, Russia is trying to undermine the U.S.,\u201d Rubio wrote in 2019<\/a>. \u201cBut Xi aims for China to displace us. Putin efforts must be addressed. But in the big picture Xi challenge is a far bigger threat.\u201d<\/p>\n In another 2019 X post<\/a>, Rubio wrote: \u201cProblem isn\u2019t people of China \u2014 it\u2019s Xi govt economic cheating & stealing & human rights abuses.\u201d<\/p>\n Rubio has also repeatedly singled out Chinese President Xi Jinping personally, arguing that Xi\u2019s leadership has damaged China\u2019s global standing through aggressive foreign policy, human rights abuses, and COVID-era secrecy.<\/p>\n In a 2020 post<\/a>, Rubio wrote that \u201chistory will say Xi\u2019s aggressiveness backfired & inflicted tremendous damage on China globally,\u201d citing the mass detention of Uyghurs, \u201cCoronavirus coverups,\u201d and the rise of China\u2019s so-called \u201cWolf Warrior Diplomats.\u201d<\/p>\n One of the primary reasons Beijing sanctioned Rubio was his outspoken criticism of China\u2019s treatment of Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in the Xinjiang region, which has included accusations of mass surveillance, persecution, arbitrary arrests, torture, forced labor, sexual violence, forced sterilization, and genocide. China has denied such abuses have taken place.<\/p>\n In 2020, Rubio declared<\/a> that China\u2019s actions amounted to \u201ca systematic state sponsored crime against humanity.\u201d<\/p>\n He later pushed<\/a> the State Department to formally determine whether Beijing\u2019s actions constituted genocide.<\/p>\n Rubio additionally introduced the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, which was signed into law in 2021. The law blocks goods made with forced labor in Xinjiang from entering American markets.<\/p>\n Rubio also has a history of calling out American corporations he believed were benefiting from Chinese forced labor practices, criticizing Nike<\/a> in 2021 for selling products made by \u201c600 Uyghurs in forced labor at the factory in Qingdao.\u201d But the treatment of Uyghurs is not the only venue for Rubio\u2019s vehement criticism of China.<\/p>\n Rubio emerged as one of the most vocal supporters of the pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong in 2019 and 2020, which were met with a brutal crackdown from the Chinese government.<\/p>\n At the time, Rubio repeatedly accused the Communist Party of violating its international commitments and dismantling the territory\u2019s promised autonomy.<\/p>\n In May 2020, Rubio blasted<\/a> Chinese officials after they accused him of placing \u201cunjustifiable pressure\u201d on China.<\/p>\n \u201cWrong,\u201d Rubio responded. \u201cChina\u2019s Communist Party is breaking its international commitments to respect Hong Kong\u2019s autonomy & democracy.\u201d<\/p>\n Rubio also introduced<\/a> the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act, legislation authorizing sanctions against Chinese and Hong Kong officials responsible for undermining freedoms in the territory. The bill received near-unanimous support in Congress.<\/p>\n In 2019, Rubio wrote<\/a> that Hong Kong was \u201ca cautionary lesson for anyone thinking about any deal with them.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThey signed a treaty promising autonomy & democracy for Hong Kong,\u201d Rubio said. \u201cThey will agree to anything to get a deal. But they have no intention of keeping those promises.\u201d<\/p>\n In 2020, Rubio warned that the Chinese Communist Party \u201cshould never be trusted to keep any international agreement they enter into,\u201d arguing<\/a> that Beijing \u201cwill lie to get any deal\u201d before ultimately doing \u201cwhatever they want\u201d once it serves their interests.<\/p>\n Throughout his career, Rubio has never shied away from one of the most contentious issues between the United States and China: Taiwan. Rubio has consistently defended Taiwan and rejected Beijing\u2019s territorial claims over the self-governing island.<\/p>\n In 2020, Rubio warned that China would attempt to intimidate Taiwan through propaganda and psychological pressure.<\/p>\n \u201cBut they will fail,\u201d Rubio wrote<\/a>. \u201cTaiwan will not be scared into surrendering their liberty & America stands with them.\u201d<\/p>\n Rubio also pushed for stronger U.S. diplomatic engagement with Taiwan, including urging the Trump administration in 2019 to send a high-level American official to events marking the anniversary of the Taiwan Relations Act.<\/p>\n \u201cTaiwan faces unprecedented threats from China,\u201d Rubio wrote<\/a>. \u201cThe U.S. must make our support clear.\u201d<\/p>\n After Russia\u2019s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Rubio also argued that the international community should support Taiwanese independence if China was willing to recognize Russian-backed separatist territories.<\/p>\n \u201cSince China supports recognizing the independence of Russian puppets in Ukraine maybe it\u2019s time the world supports the independence of the legitimate government of Taiwan,\u201d Rubio wrote<\/a> days after the invasion.<\/p>\n In October, Rubio reassured Taiwan supporters by saying the Trump administration would not negotiate away Taiwan\u2019s future in exchange for a trade deal with Beijing.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t think you\u2019re going to see some trade deal where, if what people are worried about is we\u2019re going to get some trade deal or we\u2019re going to get favorable treatment on trade in exchange for walking away from Taiwan,\u201d Rubio said<\/a>. \u201cNo one is contemplating that.\u201d<\/p>\n During the COVID-19 pandemic, Rubio emerged as one of the leading voices demanding accountability from Beijing and investigating the origins of the virus.<\/p>\n In 2020, Rubio accused the Communist Party of politicizing the pandemic and exploiting the crisis \u201cfor publicity and profit.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt proves how they politicize everything because everything, even public health, is subservient to the party,\u201d Rubio wrote<\/a>.<\/p>\n In a lengthy report<\/a> released in 2022, Rubio pointed to evidence suggesting Chinese authorities may have known about a dangerous outbreak well before publicly acknowledging it in December 2019.<\/p>\n The report also argued there were signs of a possible \u201cserious biocontainment failure or accident\u201d involving the Wuhan Institute of Virology during the second half of 2019.<\/p>\n In a 2023 Fox News interview<\/a>, Rubio said that China does not want the world to know how COVID started.<\/p>\n \u201cThis probably was a lab leak accident. Someone got infected, it has now spread across the world and the totalitarian Communist government in China doesn\u2019t want the world to know about it.\u201d<\/p>\n In an op-ed<\/a> the same year, Rubio argued that the COVID origins controversy was only one example of broader Chinese infiltration efforts targeting American institutions and corporations.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Chinese Communist Party is dangerous, deceptive, and self-serving,\u201d Rubio wrote.<\/p>\n Rubio pointed to reports claiming CCP members were embedded inside major Western companies and called for legislation targeting Chinese influence operations, espionage efforts, and military cooperation loopholes.<\/p>\n Rubio has repeatedly warned that the Chinese government was using students, researchers, and businesses to advance Beijing\u2019s military and intelligence capabilities.<\/p>\n In 2020, Rubio praised moves targeting Chinese students allegedly involved in stealing American research.<\/p>\n \u201cGood move to address China using some students at our universities to steal research & advance military capabilities,\u201d Rubio wrote<\/a> regarding Chinese graduate students being expelled if they have ties to China\u2019s military schools.<\/p>\n At the same time, Rubio warned Americans not to direct hostility toward ordinary Chinese citizens.<\/p>\n \u201cThis must be addressed in a targeted way while rejecting xenophobia,\u201d Rubio added. \u201cRemember, China\u2019s govt often entraps its own people into this.\u201d<\/p>\n Rubio also pushed legislation<\/a> aimed at exposing Chinese influence operations inside American universities.<\/p>\n In 2018, Marco Rubio introduced the Foreign Influence Transparency Act, which sought to require organizations such as Confucius Institutes to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act if they promoted the political agenda of a foreign government.<\/p>\n \u201cThis legislation aims to bring greater transparency to the activities of foreign governments operating in the United States,\u201d Rubio said at the time, arguing the bill would strengthen foreign funding disclosure requirements for colleges and universities while closing loopholes that allowed Chinese government-linked entities to operate on more than 100 American campuses.<\/p>\nRubio\u2019s Long Campaign For Uyghurs<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Rubio Supported Hong Kong Pro-Democracy Protesters<\/h3>\n
Rubio Repeatedly Defended Taiwan<\/h3>\n
Rubio Fought For Truth On COVID<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Rubio Warned About Chinese Espionage In America<\/strong><\/h3>\n