China is the new USSR, warns Rick Scott

Image via AP.

Sen. Rick Scott believes that in the new Cold War, China is the new Soviet Union.

The Senator offered his latest grim geopolitical assessment in a Washington Examiner op-ed Friday.

“The reality is that China wants power, world power — and there is a sinister, Soviet-style plan to achieve it,” Scott wrote.

The Senator spotlighted a shared feature of power between Chinese Communism and the eclipsed Soviet model, citing advantages for Beijing’s leadership due to generational entrenchment.

“Since gaining power in 2012, General Secretary Xi Jinping has mimicked Soviet Russia’s playbook: Create a bloc of global partners through strategic investment and political cajoling, steal American technology, and prop up authoritarian leaders.”

There are differences, Scott notes, with China capitalizing on soft patches in 21st century globalism.

In building strategic alliances, the Soviets used military power and territorial conquest to extend its reach beyond the Iron Curtain. China primarily expands through economic influence and exploiting our globalized system.

“And just as the Soviet Union supported Marxist revolutionaries, China props up leaders who support its worldview, providing regular financial support to totalitarian leaders in Cuba, Venezuela, and North Korea. It also maintains military partnerships with central Asian authoritarians under the Shanghai Cooperation Organization,” Scott notes, adding that “our posture with Communist China constitutes a ‘New Cold War’.”

Scott has made that claim before, but he has played the China card with increasing urgency as the 2020 presidential race finally hits the stretch run, complete with an argument earlier this week that Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden would not stand up to China were he elected.

“The best thing for the communist government in China would be for Biden to be elected President,” Scott wrote last week in an op-ed for Fox News.

Biden’s assertion in 2019 that China is “not competition for us” strikes Scott as either “naivete or appeasement.”

“The slow creep of Communist China’s internal crackdown and global expansion has been building for decades. And career politicians like Biden let it happen,” Scott noted. “Biden’s appeasement and support of Communist China allowed them to not only steal American jobs but overtake our nation as the world’s largest manufacturer.”