A senior Biden official agreed with Republican Florida Senator Marco Rubio on the dangers of U.S. dependence on China.
Senator Rubio questioned U.S. Department of State Deputy Secretary Kurt Campbell, a member of Democratic President Joe Biden’s administration, during a recent Senate Committee on Foreign Relations hearing on strategic competition with Communist China.
“The technological and industrial high ground has always been a precursor of global power,” Republican Senator Marco Rubio said. “If you look at what China has achieved, 10 years ago, maybe even less, they led in none of the cutting-edge fields. Today, they dominate the world’s electric vehicle markets….They are dominant in energy fields. They [hold about] 80 percent of the global supply chain for solar. They are technologically a leader in nuclear power in ways that have surpassed our own.”
The Florida Senator said China is not just a military and diplomatic adversary, China is also a technological, industrial, and commercial adversary. During the exchange, Rubio wanted to focus on issues and matters he thought really go to the heart of power.
In his response, Campbell said “I accept and deeply support that general worldview that you’ve just laid out,” and “How do you take steps that don’t hurt your own economy? But the point that you make, I could not agree with you more…”
Here is the transcript of the exchange between Florida Senator Marco Rubio and U.S. Department of State Deputy Secretary Kurt Campbell:
RUBIO: Thank you for being here. On this issue of China, one of the things that makes it such a unique competitor and adversary in many ways is, unlike the Soviet Union, they are not just a military and diplomatic adversary. They are a technological, industrial, and commercial adversary. I want to focus on [this aspect,] because I do think it challenges us in our foreign policy apparatus to combine commerce and trade and technological matters with geopolitics.
[Commerce and trade and technological matters] are clearly important. They’ve always been important. The technological and industrial high ground has always been a precursor of global power. If you look at what China has achieved, 10 years ago, maybe even less, they led in none of the cutting-edge fields. Today, they dominate the world’s electric vehicle markets. Primarily, this is a challenge because they’re dumping these cars, or threatening to dump these cars and eviscerate automakers, beyond just electric cars, outside of China. They are dominant in energy fields. They [hold about] 80 percent of the global supply chain for solar. They are technologically a leader in nuclear power in ways that have surpassed our own. And unfortunately, despite the electric cars and nuclear power leadership, they’re also the world’s largest polluter. Just think about that.
But the two I really want to focus on are those that I think really go to the heart of power. Number one is, [they are] by far the world’s leading shipbuilder. They’re building aircraft carriers. They’re building this fleet of LNG ships. They’re even building cruise ships. And we all understand that ship building is at the core of the ability to project power, not just military, but commercial power. And they are the undisputed king of basic industrial inputs, steel and cement and these things that are not glamorous. They don’t have Netflix miniseries about steel and cement or shipbuilding, but these are at the core of national power. They used to be at the core of our national power. We didn’t win World War Two without industrial power.
So, how does that fit, this whole view of this domination that they’re establishing in these key core industries…, into our strategy? Because some of these are going to require us to lean heavily into our alliances, to make sure that our allies in some sort of consortium fashion are not just protecting their domestic industries, but protecting the existence of non-Chinese Communist Party-controlled sources of steel, cement, shipbuilding, and the other fields that they seek.
So, how does this fit into the broader construct of our strategic approach to this challenge?
CAMPBELL: Senator, I accept and deeply support that general worldview that you’ve just laid out. I would just add one or two things.
On the first part, there is a huge debate in intellectual foreign policy about whether this is another Cold War. The one thing I worry about sometimes about that debate is that when you say “Cold War,” it conjures up views of the struggle we had with the Soviet Union, which, as you describe, was really monochromatic. It was really in a couple of different sectors, and in truth, our economies were not linked at all in any way.
One of the biggest challenges for the United States as it constructs a strategy—and I’m going to try to answer the second part of your question—is that there are very few countries that are more interdependent than the United States and China. At the same time, there are very few countries that are more uncomfortable with that interdependence. Both the United States and China are taking steps to ease and remove elements of that connectivity financially, in manufacturing, and in lines of communication. So, that’s one of the biggest challenges. How do you take steps that don’t hurt your own economy? But the point that you make, I could not agree with you more….
If I were to be asked the two things that we really need to get our act together on, [I would answer] naval shipbuilding, both surface ships [and] submarines. When I came into The White House, I thought, and I still believe, our submarine program is the jewel in the crown. But one of the things that became clear looking at AUKUS is how much more…we had to invest in our own industrial base just to keep up, just to get subs back in the water that are in dry dock. We just have to do better….
There are a lot of reasons why shipbuilding is challenging. We’ve got strong shipbuilding in the northeast, [but] we don’t have enough workers. We don’t have enough capacity generally. There are a thousand reasons why naval shipbuilding is challenging. I would like us to think there might be ways that we could work with allies and partners here, but it’s extremely difficult, [and it requires] a lot of domestic legislation. But I will tell you,…the difference in shipbuilding between the United States and China is deeply, deeply concerning. We have to do better in this arena, or we will not be the great naval power that we need to be for the 21st century.
I’ll say one last thing. The 20-year engagement in the Middle East was largely about ground forces and special forces. We made all the appropriate investments. We modernized, we innovated. Now it is the Navy and the Air Force’s time. They have to step up. They have to invest more. They have to be more innovative. They have to be more intrepid. And they’ve got to understand that the Indo-Pacific arena requires the most capable naval and advanced long-range air capabilities that the United States has ever needed before. That’s where we have to put our focus.
