page_title: Political positions of Marco Rubio
section_title: China
hierarchical_section_title: Political positions of Marco Rubio / International relations and security / Asia / China
caption_attribution_description: English: China Commission Chairman Marco Rubio holds a meeting with Hong Kong pro-democracy activists
context_page_description: Marco Rubio is a Republican politician in the United States. He is a United States Senator from Florida, and was a candidate for the Republican nomination for president of the United States in the 2016 election.
context_section_description: Weeks after the 2014 Hong Kong class boycott campaign and Umbrella Movement broke out which demands genuine universal suffrage among other goals, Rubio among bipartisan colleagues joined U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown and Rep. Chris Smith's effort to introduce Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act which would update the United States–Hong Kong Policy Act of 1992 and U.S. commitment to Hong Kong's freedom and democracy. "China remains... suppressing dissent and preventing democracy in Hong Kong.... The U.S. should make clear that we stand on the side of the democratic aspirations of the people of Hong Kong and against attempts to suppress their voices.... help to ensure that Hong Kong remains truly autonomous from Beijing." Rubio said.
  In November 2017, in response to efforts by the People's Republic of China (PRC) to purchase tech companies based in the US, Rubio was one of nine senators to cosponsor a bill that would broaden the federal government’s ability to prevent foreign purchases of U.S. firms through increasing the strength of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS). The scope of the CFIUS would be expanded to allow it to review along with possibly decline smaller investments and add additional national security factors for CFIUS to consider including if information about Americans would be exposed as part of transactions or whether the deal would facilitate fraud.
  In November 2018, Rubio and a bipartisan group of senators sent a letter to the Trump administration, raising concerns about China’s undue influence over media outlets and academic institutions in the United States. They wrote: "In American news outlets, Beijing has used financial ties to suppress negative information about the CCP. In the past four years, multiple media outlets with direct or indirect financial ties to the PRC allegedly decided not to publish stories on wealth and corruption in the CCP...Beijing has also sought to use relationships with American academic institutions and student groups to shape public discourse."
  Rubio in 2018 supported the Taiwan Travel Act passed by Congress to improve relations with the Republic of China (ROC, Taiwan), which drew ire to the PRC. 
  In January 2019, Rubio and Democrat Mark Warner introduced legislation creating the Office of Critical Technology and Security at the White House that would serve the purpose of organizing efforts to protect technology across the federal government. Rubio said in a statement, "China continues to conduct a coordinated assault on U.S. intellectual property, U.S. businesses, and our government networks and information with the full backing of the Chinese Communist Part." He furthered that the US needed "a more coordinated approach to directly counter this critical threat and ensure" better protection of American technology and that the bill would "help protect the United States by streamlining efforts across the government."
  In February 2019, Rubio proposed legislation restricting and taxing Chinese investment in the United States as a means of countering Beijing’s “Made in China 2025” (MIC2025) industrial modernisation program.
  In October 2019, American video game company Activision Blizzard punished a Hong Kong-based professional gamer for supporting pro-democracy Hong Kong protests. Rubio accused Blizzard of censorship.
caption: Rubio with Hong Kong activists who have become prominent figures in the 2019–20 Hong Kong protests
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