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Sen. Marco Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants and a former Republican presidential candidate, has made China a centerpiece of his political strategy. He has joined other members of Congress in urging the U.S. to impose sanctions on Chinese officials for human rights abuses against the ethnic minority Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang, China. He has said that the Chinese Communist Party’s delays in alerting the world to the coronavirus has cost lives; and that America should rethink its global supply chain. China, in short, is America’s strategic rival, and its companies are “exploiting” America’s capital markets. The result, he says, is that Americans are funding a totalitarian regime. What follows is a lightly edited Q&A.

Q: China has been a key focus for you for some time. So let’s start with Covid-19. Can you talk about China’s response to the outbreak, and also whether this has changed your thinking about the global supply chain?

A: Well, let me just say, as a general matter, the Chinese people reacted the way you would expect people to react. So, if you recall, that doctor [Li Wenliang, the Wuhan doctor] who informed everyone [about the virus in December 2019 and later died after becoming ill from Covid-19], was forced to sign a document, and others were silenced too. So, let me be clear, as I’ve noted in every tweet and statement that I’ve put out, I always say, “the Chinese Communist Party,” because I believe they [the Chinese people] are the victims of what the Chinese Communist Party is doing. The Chinese people suffer before everybody else. 

With that said,  there are two things at play. First, this is a reminder of our supply chain vulnerability. In this case, the disruptions and factory closings are at a time of incredible demand. But you’ve also seen the outlines of both veiled and some direct threats [from China] about cutting us off from having access to certain things. As a result, more countries are going to identify certain industries as national priorities, and they’re going to restrict foreign investment in those sectors and exports. Right now, it’s not just China; India and other countries have imposed export restrictions when they had a critical shortage of some commodity or product that they needed for their own domestic use. Countries in Europe and Asia, and the United States, will all do this sort of thing. We’re going to respond in the same way. We’re going to redefine what critical industries are, and after the pandemic, there’s going to be some protectionism around those industries across the world.

How has China handled the pandemic?

The Communist Party has handled it the way totalitarian regimes always handle any sort of crisis. That is, by not being transparent — trying to cover it up by first pretending it doesn’t exist, and punishing those that say it does. Then, trying to obscure how bad it is. And then trying to blame it on somebody else, while making themselves out to be the good guys. Those are the three processes totalitarian regimes generally follow during a crisis. I mean, it’s stunning. In the case of Iran, their initial reaction to these infections was they didn’t have it. Their second was that this was a plot by our enemies. In China, the first reaction was, ‘We don’t have a problem.’ The second was, ‘We have a problem.’ And then the third was, ‘We have a problem and we contained it. Now we’re here to help the rest of the world, and by the way, wink wink, this problem really came from American soldiers who came to China.’

This is a playbook totalitarian regimes follow. And what’s going to happen, as people around the world look at this, they are going to realize that responding to the global pandemic requires some of the attributes of free countries: transparency, scientific collaboration, and the sharing of information and best practices. These are attributes that you find in open societies. These are not attributes you find from totalitarian regimes or authoritarian regimes.

Lots of theories have floated around about the origins of this virus. There are even some theories that maybe it emerged from the military, both the PLA or U.S. soldiers visiting China. You’ve heard these things. What do you say?

What I say about this is entirely based on the opinion of people who have spent a lifetime with expertise on it. I can not independently tell you anything about a virus. I’m not an epidemiologist. I’m not a virologist or a medical professional. That said, from all the information that I have gathered, I have not seen any evidence that this virus was altered by human activity as some sort of deliberate, manufactured virus. 

What is interesting, though, is that in most of these pandemics you have animal-to-human infection — a sort of naturally occurring, randomly occurring infection. You generally have a number of people infected at once. The outbreak doesn’t begin with one person. It begins with various people who are exposed to that animal. In this particular case, from what I understand from the experts, there’s some pretty compelling evidence that there was an initial ‘patient zero.’ And it was from that one patient that others became infected. And that may suggest there was some sort of laboratory accident. But I’m not sure we will ever be able to prove that, unless the Chinese are willing to open themselves up to an international investigation about how this started. I think this is important. This is not just about assigning blame to them. This is about figuring out how to prevent something like this from happening in the future. 

Can we go back to the supply chain? The supply chain bottlenecks for things like medical supplies, such as masks and ventilators, have been a major concern; there have also been disputes about who gets those supplies. As you may know, most of the active ingredients for the global supply of antibiotics come from China and India. Are there inherent weaknesses in the global supply chain for critical goods? Should these goods be manufactured closer to home?

Look, I’m a big supporter of capitalism. And one of the things that makes capitalism the best economic model in the world is that it allocates capital to its most efficient use. You’re always going to get the most efficient outcome. There are, however, instances in which the most efficient outcome is not in our national interest. It is the most efficient outcome for the active ingredients in our generic pharmaceuticals to be made in China and other countries. It is cheaper to do it that way. But the problem is that’s not in our national interest. The ability to deny us access to that or a series of other commodities or products in a time of crisis is tremendous leverage over a country. Imagine if we had some incident in the Taiwan Straits and they said, ‘We’re going to cut off your supply of active ingredients in your medicines. And also, by the way, we’re going to cut off access to rare earth minerals.’ This is where you could get into an armed conflict. 

History gives us a valuable lesson here.  One of the things that triggered Japan to target the United States [in December 1941] was the United States’s decision to deal with Japan’s aggressive behavior before World War II by denying them access to oil and access to energy resources. Armed conflict there was inevitable, but it was certainly accelerated by the ability to deny them something that was critical to their society. When Japan saw that, they decided to act proactively. And that’s what I worry about in the future. Giving any country that sort of leverage over us creates the real possibility of armed conflict; it increases the possibility of the horrific consequences of armed conflict. And so on a broader scale, I think that’s the kind of thing that we need to think about. It’s not just about economics. This is about national security.

On national security, the U.S. government contends that the Chinese telecom giant Huawei is a security risk. There has also been legislation that has targeted BYD and other Chinese transportation companies that operate in the U.S. There seems to be a concern that they could pose a security risk. Is there a major effort in Washington to push Chinese companies out of the U.S., or restrict them from operating here?

I’ll separate that into two buckets. The first is companies operating in key sectors that are of national security or economic concern. That includes telecommunications. China has its “Made in China 2025” plan, in which they talk about trying to dominate 10 key industries in the twenty-firstst century. And that extends to the manufacturing of heavy equipment, biotechnology, artificial intelligence, quantum computing and telecommunications. The United States has a vested interest in ensuring that we have firms — either our own or through an alliance —who have a capacity in these fields; companies that are independent of the Chinese. So that’s one bucket of companies. 

The other bucket includes companies that operate in sectors that are not critical to national security. Those are two very different areas of priority. This is not about targeting Chinese companies for purposes of economic benefit. If this was a fair competition, then I would argue that we need to innovate and out hustle them. This is about them targeting our industries and deliberately targeting our industries by subsidizing their companies to compete with our companies. And then, when our companies are put out of business, they then dominate that sector. That doesn’t excuse us from having to invest in critical areas. Denying Huawei access to the U.S. market is not by itself going to create an alternative to Huawei. Which is what the western world and many of our allies in Asia were asking for; if they had an alternative to Huawei that they could afford, they would do it. But there isn’t one. And that may require a consortium of some kind to meet that demand. So we’ve got to do both of these things.

You have talked about developing a plan to counter “Made in China 2025.” What is that?

We outlined that in a report released about 15 months ago. We talked about ensuring that our policies prioritize certain things — not government takeover of industries, but our policies reflecting our national priorities. We’d like to prioritize reinvesting into the U.S. For instance, we’d like to have policies that help preserve our industrial capacity. We’d like to create jobs and the cultural and societal stability that comes with them. For example, if we’re going to have a preference in the tax code, it shouldn’t be for stock buybacks, it should be for immediate expenses. It should all be treated fairly. For instance, if a company is willing to take its profits and reinvest it back into the United States to create new jobs to innovate and build new products, that company won’t be taxed on the money used to do that. 

We also need to invest in basic research that can then be commercialized. We need to figure out whether there are opportunities to partner with allies in a consortium approach on issues like telecommunications. For example, can there be a U.S.-Asia Pacific-European consortium that creates an alternative to Huawei in 5G? Maybe we’d have one that’s software based and easy to deploy. Can the United States and our allies come up with the ability to generate locally-sourced power? That could be a cost effective way to allow developing countries to build our type of infrastructure as opposed to the traditional big grid, debt-laden projects that the Chinese are using to get their claws and hooks into certain countries. There are all sorts of things that we need to be doing to counter some of their efforts. I’m not talking about the government owning companies or picking winners or losers, but incentivizing certain outcomes.

Today, there are hundreds of Chinese companies listed on the New York Stock Exchange and the Nasdaq Stock Market. Beijing has allowed these companies to trade in the U.S. but effectively bars the S.E.C. and even American accounting firms from accessing files or records inside China. You have called for measures that would de-list Chinese companies after three years if they fail to comply with U.S. regulations. There is at least $1 trillion in market value from China at stake. When you bring this issue up, it makes people on Wall Street and in the investment world nervous. Can you explain your position? 

What Wall Street should be even more nervous about is the amount of money being invested in firms in which we have insights that are not comparable to what you should have. In other words, they are listing companies that are not adhering to the oversight and reporting requirements that any other country would have. What I’m really concerned about is that we have a significant amount of American investment — which includes pension plans and 401Ks of everyday Americans — in companies that serve the Chinese Communist Party, and they are furthering their efforts to undermine the United States. It’s ironic, for example, that the U.S. Defense personnel and federal workers are having their retirement money funding the very companies that are helping the Chinese Communist Party’s efforts to overtake and surpass our defense capabilities. 

The second problem is that we are investing in companies in which we have no insight into their accounting, and there is no accountability. And so you could wake up one morning and realize that a significant percentage of some retirement fund is invested in some Chinese company whose financials were not solid.  If it’s a big enough case, that fund collapses, and now, the federal government is going to be asked to bail out that pension fund. We should be concerned about that. All I’m saying is that if you are going to list a Chinese company, they should have to adhere to the exact same requirements as any other company headquartered in another country that’s listed on a U.S. exchange.

Much of what we now consume in the U.S. is made in China. The White House has called for more of those jobs to return to the U.S. Should American companies be manufacturing more at home? 

Yes, we need supply chain diversification. Some onshoring or bringing jobs back from China is already happening. Other places are more efficient, and if you’re reading the tea leaves, there’s bipartisan angst about the Chinese approach to trade and commerce; maybe now it’s wise to begin to diversify where we are producing things. Companies that have had factories in China shut down for a substantial period of time because of mismanagement of this pandemic are looking at it and saying, ‘This is the fourth pandemic in a decade.’ We need to create an environment here in the United States that incentivizes them to come back here to the extent possible.

And if they can’t come back here, as part of our broader strategic approach, I would love to see an increase in manufacturing and industrial capacity come to Central America. That could help stabilize El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, even Haiti potentially. One way to do it is to have jobs available so people don’t have to abandon the country. Now, obviously that doesn’t all depend upon us. Those countries have to have a rule of law and capabilities for them to come in. But it would be great if that was a stated objective of some of our policies. This is something we need to think about, not as a traditional protectionist view, but because of national security and as part of the broader strategy.

Can we shift to immigration and American universities? Recently, Sen. Tom Cotton suggested that Chinese students should not be given visas to study science, another indication that maybe they are a threat to national security. American graduate schools are filled with Chinese students. Some people worry about growing xenophobia and even racism towards Chinese students or students of Asian descent. Can you address this issue?

First, we can’t ignore the reality. We have repeatedly seen cases in which students from China, particularly graduate students in certain fields, have been part of efforts to steal technology and send it back to China, for a variety of reasons. We can’t ignore it. I temper that with a discomfort over creating an environment in which any student of Asian descent is viewed with suspicion and feels hatred and anger towards them. 

I’ll give you a perfect example. It’s not colleges, but it’s something that’s impacted me. I know of a school in North Carolina; it’s a faith-based school, and they have about a dozen exchange students from China. They are here to get an education. These are 10th, 11th, and 12th graders. And understand, many of these kids have had their homes wiped out by the virus. These kids are here, and they can’t go back. They are worried about their families back home; their parents wanted them to be here to go to a Christian school. You know, I feel terrible for those kids. I don’t want kids like that being treated poorly. By the same token, you know, we’ve got to handle the fact that, yes, China deliberately uses their students abroad as a way to steal research. So it’s a very tricky situation. This is one thing we need to confront, but always with the awareness and sensitivity that we don’t necessarily want that to turn into an excuse to target students of Asian descent.

So it seems like a major challenge to investigate and yet protect the universities and their students and not alarm everyone or unfairly target Asians?

That’s a big challenge. And I can’t tell you that anyone has a perfect model on how to do that yet. I do think that there has been an assumption among higher education that if we give someone a visa, that means that we somehow cleared them. I think this is why universities are under the assumption that ‘you let them in and you gave them a visa and that’s a stamp of approval — we have nothing to worry about.’ 

I would say that we probably need to focus our efforts on graduate students in certain fields. One of the ways to deal with that is to provide extra scrutiny and oversight over student visas for certain fields, certain areas. We may also have to apply some of the exclusions for foreigners to participate in certain types of research. This is the way we do it now on certain defense contracts, I mean, if you visit a defense contractor facility, there are places where foreign nationals are not allowed to go. It’s just the way that the security systems are set up. So those are some general outlines, but it’ll be a tricky situation. Like I said, it won’t be easy to do, and we’re going to get some things wrong, but it’s something that needs to be done.

Last month, China expelled a group of American journalists working at the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and Voice of America, in what the government signalled was retaliation for the U.S. decision to expel some Chinese journalists who were considered state agents. Can you address this situation?

I have commented repeatedly on what has happened to these U.S. media outlets, and I think it’s one of the reasons why you saw the State Department impose restrictions on news organizations from China’s reporting from the U.S. and told them that they have to register [as agents]. It’s been well documented what Bloomberg News has done to preserve its access to China. The other unusual thing is you will see ads in our media, for instance, paid ads on the Politico website from Huawei, about the U.S. government restrictions on Huawei — the kind of ads that look like news articles and argue that these restrictions are hurting U.S. telecom providers. They’re advertising on some of our own media platforms. This is a Chinese company that we know acts as an extension of the Chinese Communist Party advertising in our media for the purposes of influencing our public policy and our country.

In recent years, there has been a rather dramatic shift in U.S. policy towards China. And you’ve made China a central feature of your own foreign and even domestic policy agenda. What led to this shift?

Let me speak personally to it. You know, there was a general consensus in American politics, to the left and right for the most part, that once China got rich they would become more like us. Once they become more capitalist, they would see the benefits of trade and commerce that we adhere to. And that was wrong. We thought capitalism would change China; we didn’t realize that China would try to change capitalism. 

We thought capitalism would change China; we didn’t realize that China would try to change capitalism.

I think number two is Xi [Jinping]. I think he’s been very aggressive, especially after 2008 and 2009, when the Chinese leadership sort of misread the economic crisis as the beginning of the collapse of the west and of capitalism. And they’ve convinced themselves that the U.S. is a great power in rapid decline and now is the time to move aggressively and become the most powerful and influential nation on earth. I think he’s pressed the accelerator, whereas their strategy for a long time seemed to be “bide your time” and then quietly, in an understated way, continue to build up. They called themselves an underdeveloped country. I think now they’ve switched under Xi to very open and aggressive messaging. I don’t read Mandarin, but the English translation of some of the things they say in their native outlets is pretty aggressive about how they view themselves in the world and what they believe this is all going to turn out to look like. So I think this very aggressive approach from China has been a part of the change as well. 

From my perspective, I didn’t start as a China person. I came to it from the ground up, as opposed to from the top down. On human rights issues, some of the greatest abuses are happening in China. The issues we were facing in the United States with industrial capacity and jobs and entire communities being left behind by transitions, ultimately led me to China. The work I do on the Intelligence Committee and some of the vulnerabilities we have, ultimately led me to China. So all these roads kept leading me back to something the Chinese Communist Party was doing. And eventually you put it all together and you say, ‘This is a pretty big deal.’ Look, we’ve been talking about China for three and a half, four years. And now because of Covid-19,  everyone is talking about China. But this is not new.

One final question. U.S.-China relations have clearly deteriorated, and during this Covid-19 crisis, even turned ugly. Do you worry that if the U.S. is too strong in its responses and pushes too hard against China that this could lead into a more serious and dangerous conflict, even an armed conflict?

Yes, but I think what’s even more dangerous is to allow this imbalance to continue. The single greatest accelerant of any sort of conflict — be it an armed conflict or a trade conflict, which is already ongoing — is an imbalance in our relationship. If a dangerous imbalance develops and we realize it, then we have to counter it, or it spirals out of control. I have said this repeatedly that China is going to be a rich and powerful country. This is not about restricting them. I think the twenty-first century is going to be defined by the relationship between the U.S. and China. The question is: Do we want it to be a balanced relationship in which both sides are constrained on what they can do because of the consequences of overreaching? Do we want it to be a balanced relationship in which our national security and economic interests are protected? Or do we want it to be an increasingly unbalanced relationship that forces us to try to catch up by responding aggressively in one way or the other? And that, I think, is the single greatest threat that could lead to conflict.

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