Rick Scott enlists India in ‘New Cold War’ with China

Rick Scott in Bogota, Colombia on a foreign policy trip.

U.S. Sen. Rick Scott continues his efforts toward a global coalition to stand up against Communist China in the wake of recent Chinese conflicts with India.

Thursday saw his office publicize a letter to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, offering condolences for China killing Indian soldiers and asserting shared purpose.

“The United States stands with India as you fight against Communist China’s aggression,” Scott wrote, offering help in whatever way possible against the Beijing regime.

For Scott, this is the latest outreach in what he has called a “New Cold War” with China, an effort that has seen him take an unusual interest in global alliance building for a first-term Senator.

The timing of this is especially notable, given the beginning of Beijing’s Hong Kong crackdown this week, a new security paradigm that will erase Hong Kong’s sense of sovereign identity and tilt the former British colony into the mainland’s orbit in a way beyond the point of return.

Last month, the Senator made a strong play to Australians, dealing with their own China crisis.

In an article in the Sydney Morning Herald, Scott was less than friendly towards the regime in Beijing.

“The way I look at it is that the General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party [Xi Jinping] has made a decision to have a cold war against the United States and democracies around the world,” Scott said.

“We ought to do this together. All democracies are going to have to say to themselves: Are they going to continue to appease the Communist Party of China, which is clearly focused on world domination and has taken jobs from democracies all over the world and stolen technologies from all over the world?”

The tough talk is nothing new for Scott, who has sparred with China since going to the Senate last year. But the New Cold War phrasing is of more recent vintage.

“American companies have come to the realization that Communist China is not our friend,” Scott said in May. “Think of how all these companies have been devastated by what Communist China did. We’ve got to fight against an adversary and it’s called the Communist Party of China.”

Scott continues to joust with Chinese media also. And sometimes they take his bait.

“Ugly politicians like Scott have become the source of rumors and lies about China. It seems they would like to make false accusations against China as long as they can fool Americans, even if only a small group of voters, to gain votes,” the Global Times, a CCP paper, asserted last month.