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Trump's desire for Greenland, Panama Canal legit amid China concerns: Rubio

Chinese investments in ports and other infrastructure at both the Pacific and Caribbean ends of the canal are a cause for major concern, leaving Panama and critical shipping route vulnerable to China

Marco Rubio

Rubio added that if China wanted to obstruct traffic in the Panama Canal, they could and that would be a violation of the 1977 treaty | (Photo: Shutterstock)

AP Washington

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Describing China as a grave national security threat to America, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said that the history of the 21st century will largely be about what happened between the two countries.

China wants to be the most powerful country in the world and they want to do so at our expense, and that's not in our national interest, and we're going to address it. We don't want a war over it, but we're going to address it, Rubio told Megyn Kelly of The Megyn Kelly Show in an interview on Thursday.

In the case of China, there are two things...the grave threat that they pose to our national interests; and the other is the mature realisation that no matter what happens, China is going to be a rich and powerful country," he said, asserting that the US will have to deal with it.

 

"The history of the 21st century will largely be about what happened between the US and China. So for us to pretend that somehow we're not going to engage with them is absurd, he said.

Rubio stressed the need to prioritise national interests, criticising decades of US policies that treated China as a developing country and let it exploit unfair trade and technology practices assuming it would adopt American values.

Instead, he said, China grew rich without changing and still seeks these advantages. "That has to stop," Rubio said in his first interview after becoming the Secretary of State.

He said China's perception of the world is that they are inevitably going to be the world's greatest power by 2035 or 2050.

Whatever date they've set in their mind, they believe that they are on an irreversible rise and we are in inevitable decline, that the West at large, but the US in specific, is a tired, spent, former great power in inevitable decline," he said.

"And they believe the foreign policy is about managing our decline and their rise, and they want nothing to interrupt it. That's how they view the West writ large and the United States in particular, he said.

So anytime our leaders sort of personify their vision of our problems, it only further cements that belief that they have, and frankly invites them to do things that perhaps they wouldn't do if they have a different calculus of us, said the top American diplomat.

Asserting that while China is a great power with a large economy and will become a global power, he said it cannot come at the US' expense.

"So ultimately when you're dealing with great powers like China, it's going to be at the highest levels of their president and ours, he said.

Responding to a question, Rubio asserted that the US cannot let China control the Panama Canal. We cannot allow any foreign power particularly China to hold that kind of potential control over it that they do. That just can't continue, he said.

Hong Kong-based companies having control over the entry and exit points of the canal is completely unacceptable," he said, warning that if a conflict arose and China instructed them to block the canal, restricting US trade, commerce, and the deployment of its military to the Indo-Pacific, they would be compelled to comply.

"And we'd have a major problem on our hands, he said.

"Secondly the US built this. We paid for it. Thousands of people (Americans) died doing this," he said, adding that in some cases American naval vessels pay higher rates than other countries, like China. "That's also not acceptable, he said.

It was a terrible deal when it was made, it should never have been allowed. They're going to tell you that it's set by an independent administrative entity and not the government; that's their internal problem."  "But we should not be in a position of having to pay more than other countries. In fact, we should be getting a discount or maybe for free because we paid for the thing, Rubio said.

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First Published: Jan 31 2025 | 7:40 AM IST

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