Sen. Rubio Warns China Wants to Replace US as Top World Economy

Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., said in an op-ed in the British Telegraph on Tuesday that China is aiming to replace the United States as the world’s top economy, including toppling the dollar in favor of its yuan currency.

“They operate on 50-year plans, not two-week plans like we do,” The Hill reported Rubio saying in the piece. “It was always to replace or supplant the U.S. as the world’s dominant economy on every front.”

Rubio, the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, stated that China’s current efforts to replace the dollar with its own yuan as the globe’s default currency have accelerated due to the need to evade U.S. sanctions on Russia in the wake of its invasion of Ukraine last year.

According to the report, he said that the sanctions have now made the yuan the most traded currency in Russia.

“This alternative financial system is currently limited by its scope,” Rubio wrote. “Nevertheless, it is providing a lifeline to [Russian President] Vladimir Putin as he resists punitive measures in the wake of his invasion of Ukraine.”

He also said that that the emergence of this “alternative financial system” “creates a blind spot” for international companies that trade with the United States to hide bad behavior from the global community.

“Moreover, as China’s economy continues to grow, more nations will enter Beijing’s orbit and this emerging system” of alternative finance, The Hill reported Rubio writing.

“Two policy conclusions should follow from these developments. The first is that we need to revitalize domestic manufacturing,” Rubio said. He added that in order “to survive and thrive in a multipolar era, we need to be able to make things again — from semiconductors to pharmaceuticals and everything in between.”

The Florida senator’s report also stated that the U.S. must be careful and get better working with allies, who we can no longer count on to follow our lead automatically, and work on building our own coalition.

“To balance Beijing’s growing anti-American coalition and to keep the dollar as strong as possible, the U.S. must build a coalition of its own,” he wrote. “The Chinese are thinking that’s there’s going to be a Western-led sanctions as a result of something that happens in Taiwan. I think they begin to view as, ‘Well, this is the best way to protect ourselves, to make sure we can conduct business.'”

Rubio said in the report that even though sanctions can be effective in the current environment, the new alternative financial system is also giving countries the ability to purchase Russian oil at a discount, circumventing the United States.

“I think the Chinese see an opportunity now and you’re beginning to see them make moves,” he wrote. “If you sanction enough countries, you create almost a common market of economies that have an interest in an alternative way to conduct business with one another.”