Former US Ambassador to the United Nations, and former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley issued a stark, grave warning to the the world with regards to the threat from China.
In an address in South Korea at the Asian Leadership Conference in Seoul, Haley described China as the US’s “foremost national security concern.” She also issued a warning, advising people to be aware that the conventional wisdom regarding the far-eastern superpower is “dead.”
“China has become our foremost national security concern,” she said in her address in Seoul, South Korea. “Does this mean it’s America’s enemy? No. Not necessarily. At one and the same time it is a principal trade and investment player, our chief strategic competitor, and our most serious potential military antagonist.”
According to Fox News:
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The former South Carolina governor dismissed the theory of convergence, which predicted that as China grew wealthier, it would have to liberalize politically at home and therefore become similar to the U.S. in domestic politics and its outlook on foreign relations.
She called such a theory “false comfort,” and said that Chinese President Xi Jinping has “effectively killed the notion of convergence.”
“China is growing economically without democratizing. On the contrary, its government is thoroughly ideological and increasingly repressive,” she said, according to prepared remarks. “Its military ambitions are not just regional and defensive; they are global and designed to intimidate.”
“So, I’m here to tell you that the long-standing conventional wisdom about China is dead. Wishful thinking has been overtaken by events,” she said.
Haley said that Xi’s China has created “an Orwellian surveillance state,” kidnapped domestic critics abroad, stolen intellectual property from foreigners (including the U.S.) and is using economic policy to strengthen the government’s power at home and abroad: “The Americans think business, while the Chinese think power politics.”
As an example of Chinese aggression, she pointed to Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative — an ambitious international infrastructure and development program. Haley noted that it “relies heavily on corrupt financing arrangements that burden foreign governments with debt they cannot afford to pay.”
She drew attention to a “civil-military integration policy” by which the Chinese government requires even privately-owned companies to work for the military, meaning that “business with Chinese is not just business.”
Nikki Haley’s comments come as the President’s administration is increasing tariffs on China as part of the ongoing trade feud between the two nations.
President Trump tweeted on Monday, stating that he would meet with Chinese President Xi during the G20 summit in Japan in late June:
When the time is right we will make a deal with China. My respect and friendship with President Xi is unlimited but, as I have told him many times before, this must be a great deal for the United States or it just doesn’t make any sense. We have to be allowed to make up some…..
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 14, 2019
….of the tremendous ground we have lost to China on Trade since the ridiculous one sided formation of the WTO. It will all happen, and much faster than people think!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 14, 2019
Haley hopes that the American people wake up to the Chinese threat very soon.
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