Rubio: China Has 'Weaponized' US 'Corporate Lust for Profits'

Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., this week said in testimony before a Senate panel that China’s government has "weaponized our openness … our decency," and "a corporate lust for profits among us."

During a public hearing by the Senate Intelligence Committee on Wednesday, Rubio said the United States should "wake up" to the threat of China, saying that America could inherit what he called China’s "genocidal communist tyranny."

He said, "The long arm of China is not some futuristic threat. It’s already here. Today, the Chinese Communist Party has 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. They have weaponized our openness, they have weaponized our decency and they have weaponized a corporate lust for profits against us."

Rubio said that multiple U.S. businesses have succumbed to pressure from China to fire employees or remove clothing that has critical messages about the country’s government or imposes on Beijing’s censorship policies.

"The U.S. corporations are so desperate to have access to the Chinese market that they’ll lead costly boycotts of a state — an American state — that passes a law that they don’t like, but they don’t dare say a word about the fact that, as we speak, genocide is taking place against Uyghur Muslims," the senator said.

"American companies have actually fired Americans who live in America for saying or writing something that China doesn’t like. There’s some examples here that are pretty stunning."

He went on to say that "China is stealing between 300 and 600 billion dollars a year … of American technology and intellectual property. They hack into networks and they take it. They use venture capital funds to buy promising technology startups. They hide their ownership, by the way."

Rubio continued, "They partner with universities on research and then they steal that research — often research whose seed funding came from the US taxpayer. They force American companies doing business in China to give the technology over to them.

"Hollywood is so desperate, for example, to have their movies shown in China that Hollywood won’t make a movie that China’s communist censors don’t approve."

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