{"id":60938,"date":"2023-11-09T09:43:28","date_gmt":"2023-11-09T17:43:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=60938"},"modified":"2023-11-09T09:43:28","modified_gmt":"2023-11-09T17:43:28","slug":"anti-china-rhetoric-takes-center-stage-at-third-republican-presidential-debate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=60938","title":{"rendered":"Anti-China Rhetoric Takes Center Stage at Third Republican Presidential Debate"},"content":{"rendered":"
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By<\/span>Sunita Sohrabji<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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From left to right: Republican presidential candidates Chris Christie, Nikki Haley, Ron DeSantis, Vivek Ramaswamy, and Tim Scott are shown on the debate stage Nov. 8 in Miami, Florida. (screenshot via Twitter)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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China bashing loomed large at the third Republican Presidential debate Nov. 8 in Miami Florida, setting off fears of a fresh wave of anti-Asian American hate crimes.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have significant concerns about the 2024 election in the current political landscape, and believe hate crimes and incidents will continue to be an issue,\u201d Manjusha Kulkarni, co-founder of\u00a0Stop AAPI Hate<\/u><\/a>, told Ethnic Media Services. The web portal, which allows victims to report hate attacks or incidents in one of several Asian languages, has logged over 11,500 reports since its inception in March, 2020.<\/p>\n

Candidates on the debate stage included Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, South Carolina Senator Tim Scott, former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, and biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy. Noticeably absent was former President Donald Trump, who also skipped two previous debates but remains the front runner for the Republican nomination.<\/p>\n

Land Bans<\/h2>\n

All candidates onstage called for decoupling the US-China trade relationship.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to get serious about the top threat that this country faces, which is the Chinese Communist Party,\u201d declared DeSantis. \u201cI banned China from buying land in this state. We\u2019ve recognized the threat and we\u2019ve acted swiftly and decisively.\u201d<\/p>\n

Notably, the two Asian American candidates onstage were the most vocal in their anti-China rhetoric.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo more sales of our American soil to China. Let\u2019s take back what they\u2019ve already stolen,\u201d said Haley, tacitly expressing her support for legislation in several states which would ban Chinese nationals from purchasing land. \u201cThen we will go and end all formal trade relations with China until they stop murdering Americans with fentanyl,\u201d she stated.<\/p>\n

Taiwan Conflict<\/h2>\n

Haley also noted that the US military is currently under-equipped to take on an armed conflict with China if it invades Taiwan. Chinese Premier Xi Jinping has expressed his interest in \u201creunifying\u201d Taiwan with China sometime over the next four years.<\/p>\n

\u201cChina has the largest naval fleet in the world. They have 350 ships. They\u2019ll have 400 ships in two years. We won\u2019t even have 350 ships in two decades. China has built up their military. It\u2019s not just land, air and sea: they\u2019re doing cyber, they\u2019re doing artificial intelligence. They\u2019re doing space.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAmerica needs to modernize our military,\u201d said Haley, who is currently tied with DeSantis for second place in several polls.<\/p>\n

China Dependence<\/h2>\n

\u201cHere\u2019s the dirty little secret. Our actual defense industrial base depends on China for the supply chain, for the fighter jets, for the ships that we\u2019re building,\u201d said Ramaswamy. \u201cWe depend on them for pharmaceuticals, just like we depend on them for semiconductors. So here\u2019s why we can\u2019t get tough with China. It\u2019s because we depend on them for our modern way of life.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have to declare economic independence from our enemy,\u201d he stated.<\/p>\n

TikTok<\/h2>\n

Much of the debate focused on the social media app TikTok, which is owned by the Chinese company ByteDance. Candidates accused TikTok of spying on Americans, particularly young people, with whom the app is extremely popular.<\/p>\n

\u201cTikTok is not only spyware, it is polluting the minds of American young people all throughout this country, and China is doing it intentionally,\u201d said Christie. \u201cThis is China trying to further divide the United States of America.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you cannot ban TikTok, you should eliminate Chinese presence on the app,\u201d stated Scott. \u201cI think it\u2019s incredibly important for us as Americans to take back control of our information, especially of our kids. Where does it go? We should know that,\u201d he said, calling for parental consent for all users under the age of 14.<\/p>\n

Restrict Act<\/h2>\n

Sen. Mark Warner, D-Virginia, introduced the RESTRICT Act earlier this year, which would impose limitations on the kind of data that Chinese companies could collect on social media apps.<\/p>\n

Warner, who is chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told reporters at an Ethnic Media Services news briefing that Chinese engineers have access to the data of millions of American users. He worries the CCP could use that data as part of misinformation and propaganda campaigns, or even to blackmail Americans.<\/p>\n

John Yang, President and Executive Director of Asian Americans Advancing Justice \u2014 AAAJ-AAJC \u2014\u00a0said at the briefing that Asian Americans could become targets of anti-Chinese sentiment.<\/p>\n

Lawmakers are promoting the false narrative that everything Chinese is threatening. \u201cIt is our community that often pays the price for their reckless rhetoric,\u201d said Yang.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BySunita Sohrabji Nov 9, 2023 From...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-60938","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-u-s-a"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60938","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=60938"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60938\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":60939,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60938\/revisions\/60939"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=60938"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=60938"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=60938"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}