Republicans are joining Democrats in adopting an aggressive stance toward relations with China, a development that Arkansas Republican Tom Cotton attributes to the influence of President Trump.
“There is some truth to that, that many Democrats have, in part because of China’s trade practices, been China hawks to a greater extent than Republicans have been,” Cotton said in an interview with the Washington Examiner in his office in the Russell Senate Office Building.
It’s only been in the last few years, “especially once President Trump was elected, that more Republicans, in particular, joined my view of China and are being outspoken about China’s aggression,” he said.
Cotton, whose office features Rice Krispies Treats from Arkansas, framed photographs of his leafy running routes in Mount Nebo State Park, and books about the military and veterans, said that he’s focused on the rising threat of China in part because of its increasing military muscle. He’s forced to reckon with China’s military capabilities in the Senate Armed Services Committee, and he has a military background of his own as a captain in the U.S. Army, serving tours in Iraq and Afghanistan where he received a Bronze Star.
Furthermore, he says, China’s agricultural espionage has particularly affected his home state of Arkansas.
The Harvard Law graduate said he’s sought to raise warnings about China since his time in the House, when “China was building those rising islands in the South China Sea — you know I tried to take action and stop that. Unfortunately, the Obama administration largely turned a blind eye, and that’s a fait accompli.”
Since 2013, China has worked to create artificial islands in the South China Sea to bolster its territorial claims over critical trade routes and resources in the region.
“China has gotten more and more aggressive [and] in many ways more successful, successful through ill-gotten means of course,” Cotton said.
He emphasized that through theft of intellectual property, malign trade practices, military aggression, and aggressive diplomacy, “the threat of China has risen and continues to rise. I think it’s very important that we be clear-eyed about the matter.”
“Now, as of late, though, we have a president who is willing to stand up to China’s trade practices.”
Cotton is one of Trump’s closest allies in the Senate. They align ideologically on several key issues, including favoring a more restrictive immigration system to opposing the Iran nuclear deal.
Regarding China, Cotton said that “the president, I think, deserves a lot of credit for bringing most of the other elected Republicans in Washington around to our view of China, not just on national security matters, but on the economics and human rights matters as well.”
Cotton said that most members of Congress were still not fully aware of China’s increasingly hostile activities.
“They’re not as constantly confronted with the overwhelming evidence of China’s malign tensions against the United States and their growing capabilities,” Cotton said.
He added that his colleagues didn’t need classified intelligence to understand what China is doing. “You can read about it in the newspaper,” he said.
Given that agriculture is the largest industry in Arkansas, and it is the biggest producer of rice in the nation, China’s espionage tactics in regard to crops and agriculture are of particular concern to Cotton.
“There’s [espionage] cases like that open in every single district. In Silicon Valley, it may be about quantum computing. In places like Arkansas or Iowa, it’s going to be about agriculture and biosciences,” Cotton said.
Cotton, who was born and raised in Yell County on his family’s cattle farm, said that China is “far, far [from being] capable of feeding itself” — which is why it tries to steal modern techniques and strategies for growing crops from places like Arkansas.
People in Washington and Silicon Valley, he said, are overlooking the threat of Chinese agricultural technology theft “because they think that food grows in a grocery store.”
