National security advisor warns of China threat if Biden wins the presidency
he doesn’t call it the china virus you know why because china hasn’t paid off he can’t use that term you know they gave his son one and a half billion to manage he makes millions of dollars a year i assume look he cannot take on china the virus is just our latest battle with china but foreign policy watchers warn that while we’ve been fighting kovid china has continued to fight the united states on many fronts china watcher david wartime writes today to remind us that quote beijing believes the united states is locked in terminal decline and that it can manipulate washington via wall street wall street is hungry to get a bigger piece of china’s growing middle class and president xi is expanding his power by the day while
there are arguments from our allies for either u.s presidential outcome there are concerns that for example abide in victory could mean that japan will have to monitor closely any moves that downplay the china threat and that while some in the asia-pacific rim might welcome the defeat of president trump there are quote they are quote wary of biden’s ability to execute a tougher china policy china is going to eat our lunch come on man they’re not bad folks folks but guess what they’re not a they’re not competition for us which country is the biggest threat to america well i think the biggest threat to america right now in terms of breaking up our our security and our alliances is russia secondly i think that the biggest
competitor is china you’re now u.s national security adviser robert o’brien good to have you with us this evening mr o’brien thank you uh obviously you work in the white house you work with president trump so i i know that you think that his china policy is sound but you know given what we know and we haven’t heard a whole lot about this during the campaign how do you think china would perceive the difference between the two men between president trump and a potential president biden well we look at the past 40 years but especially the past eight years with a lead from behind foreign policy and a strategic patience foreign policy where america turned a blind eye to chinese unfair trade practices it turned a blind eye to chinese intellectual property theft of all of our our great innovati innovations it turned a blind eye to china hollowing out the the american midwest and our manufacturing capability and you contrast that with president
trump who’s the first president of my adult lifetime who recognized the threat from china who put tariffs on china who’s called called china out for its intellectual property theft and then on the defense side who adopted ronald reagan’s peace through strength policy by rebuilding our military remember our military had been decimated under the prior administration’s defense sequestration and the president has rebuilt our military so that deters china so it’s a very different uh i i have no idea because the vice fred and biden takes different positions on the campaign trail and it’s not my job to be political all i can do is look at what we we faced when we came into office and what president trump has done and it’s been pretty spectacular what the the president has done with respect to china so there’s a piece in the south china
morning post a headline that says beijing gives cautious welcome to vladimir putin’s hint over a russia-china military alliance so some might argue that the much more aggressive stance towards china might drive those two adversaries of ours closer together is that something that concerns you and do you think it is a direct result of our more aggressive stance against china do you think a more conciliatory approach might have prevented those two from coming together no what we see is uh these two authoritarian regimes have been working closely together for many many years much of china’s defense industry came from russia the russians have been supplying them for years and years and we’re going to see a battle we’re going to see a a divide in the world and the divide in the world isn’t going to be the old u.s ussr divide
where there was a big nine align movement you’re now going to see a divide in the world between governments that believe in our values like brazil and india and europe and the uk and and north america uh democracies governments and countries that believe in the rule of law and on the other side you’re going to have countries like iran and russia and china getting closer together those countries don’t share our values they’re authoritarian they they spy on their own people they’re they abuse human rights they they expand uh their territory through the use of force so we’re going to really see a difference in the coming years between the democracies and and no one has strengthened our our relationship with india for example between president uh trump and prime minister modi or with brazil where i was last week between president bolsonaro and president trump we’re making tremendous headway in bringing the democracies and the like-minded
countries together as we confront the challenges that come from russia and china so there are indications that some of those countries are a bit nervous about having to shoulder more of the burden to stand up to china on their own in a potential bid administration but the biden platform on this says that they would be better at bringing allies together against china and that they would be stronger on things like cracking down on the uyghurs, for example, there’s a new senate initiative between senator menendez and senator risch to try to be more forceful in calling that genocide is it a fair
criticism has the trump administration been tough enough on human rights issues in china well first of all with the allies i don’t think any country has done more to bring our allies together on china than the trump administration remember huawei was running wild they stole all our ip from our own tele communications companies put them out of business right and then became the world leader we’ve got countries from poland to australia to brazil to italy to the uk saying no
to huawei so with nato we’ve got nato spending 400 billion dollars more that’s something president obama and vice president biden were never able to get and when it comes to the uyghurs we’re the only country in the first administration this did not happen in the biden obama administration previously were the first administration to sanction chinese companies that use uighur slave labor to to have sanctioned members of the the chinese communist party for suppressing the uyghurs no other country has done it and no other administration has done it so president trump is the only one
who’s gotten tough with china and the uyghurs i i you know i i can’t imagine another administration being any tougher than president trump has been already with respect to religious freedom in china white house national security adviser robert o’brien thank you sir always good to have you with us
