The United States National Security Advisor Robert O'Brien said that time has come to accept that dialogue and agreements will not persuade or compel the People's Republic of China to change. "There is nothing to be gained from looking the other way or turning the other cheek. We have been doing that for too long," he said.
China and the US are on a collision course, with rivalry ramping up since the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic and Beijing's misadventures along its borders. O'Brien quoted Ladakh and Taiwan as examples of Chinese aggression. "China has attempted to seize control of the Line of Actual Control [LAC] with India by force as part of its territorial aggression. The Chinese territorial aggression is also true in the Taiwan Strait where the PLA [People's Liberation Army] navy and air force continue to conduct threatening military drills," he said.
"Beijing's signature international development programme, One Belt One Road [OBOR], involves impoverished companies taking on opaque and unsustainable Chinese loans to pay Chinese firms employing Chinese labourers to build their infrastructure," he said. "Many of these projects are unnecessary, shoddily built and are 'white elephants'. And now these countries' dependence on the Chinese debt leaves their sovereignty eroded and with no choice but to hue to the party's line on UN votes or any other issue that the Chinese Communist Party considers a red line." O'Brien also noted that China's other international aid efforts include selling surveillance systems and similar tools of repression to "pariah regimes" around the world, including Venezuela's Nicolas Maduro.
O'Brien said the US must stand up to the Chinese and protect the American people. "We must promote American prosperity, practise peace through strength and advance American influence in the world," he said, adding that under US President Donald Trump's leadership that is exactly what the US has done.
"President Trump has taken decisive action to meet these objectives. He is working to prevent companies that answer to the CCP's intelligence and security apparatus," O'Brien said.
Citing examples, he said Chinese telecommunications giants Huawei and ZTE have been prevented from accessing Americans' personal and private data and national secrets. The Trump administration, he said, has also imposed import and export restrictions on US semiconductor technology and other exports going to Huawei and similar Chinese telecommunications corporations.
"Our democratic partners are starting to follow. Just last month, the UK joined democracies such as the Czech Republic, Denmark, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Sweden in committing to using trusted suppliers to build their future 5G networks," O'Brien said. "Carriers like Jio in India, Telstra in Australia, SK and KT in South Korea, NTT in Japan, and others have prohibited the use of Huawei equipment in their networks. The Trump administration is investigating and prosecuting the economic espionage aggressively," he said.
-Inputs from PTI
