Rubio calls US investment in CCP-controlled companies ‘a serious threat’ to security
Asher Notheis
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Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) warned about the dangers of the United States engaging in investments with companies backed by the Chinese Communist Party in an op-ed published on Tuesday.
The Florida senator said Alibaba, an e-commerce company backed by the CCP, is open to investment to the U.S., despite two other CCP-backed companies, BGI Group and DGI Sciences and Technologies, being removed from the U.S.’s stock exchanges. Rubio also warned that other CCP-backed companies across the globe are being strengthened and supported thanks to U.S. capital, according to his op-ed published by the Washington Examiner.
“It’s also a threat to our economy,” Rubio writes. “Beijing’s ability to direct the internal operations of ‘private’ Chinese firms at any time makes investing in those firms financially risky as well as ethically dubious. In recent years, corporate crackdowns by the CCP have cost the United States hundreds of billions of dollars.”
Rubio also expressed concern that President Joe Biden could make an arrangement with Beijing “to keep Wall Street’s cash flowing to China.” Doing so could cause issues with regulators trying to remove suspicious Chinese firms from American markets via the Holding Foreign Companies Accountable Act, which became law in December 2020.
In the next few years, however, Congress could very well find common ground in countering China and pass legislation to crack down on CCP-backed companies, Rubio writes. The Florida senator has several bills he recommends that Congress pass in order to make this happen, including the American Financial Markets Integrity and Security Act and the Countering Corporate Corruption in China Act.
The American Financial Markets Integrity and Security Act would prohibit people living in the U.S. from investing in any companies listed on the Department of Commerce Entity List or the Department of Defense’s list of Chinese military companies, while the Countering Corporate Corruption in China Act would serve to penalize firms aiding or excusing CCP abuses.
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In March, Rubio warned that the CCP is still the top long-term threat to the U.S. and asked for the Biden administration to bring back the China Initiative to defeat it. The Department of Justice announced in February that it would pull the plug on the 2018 Trump-era initiative aimed at cracking down on China’s economic espionage, a move criticized by many Republican lawmakers.