He has a courageous record of fighting the Chinese Communist Party with acts, not words only. Will he also renew Mike Pompeo’s vision of putting religious liberty at the top of human rights?
by Marco Respinti
Most probably, the next US Secretary of State will be Marco Rubio. It was announced by Donald J. Trump, who is the president-elect even if, formally, the election of the 47th president of the United States of America will be cast on December 18 by the Electoral College, or the delegates that have been chosen by the states’ citizens through the popular vote. The result of the vote by the Electoral College will be officially announced on January 6, 2025, and the new president will be inaugurated on January 20.
“Bitter Winter” does not deal with partisan politics. However, it is important for its readers to understand that for all those who are persecuted by the Communist regime in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) Rubio’s appointment is excellent news, as several organizations of Chinese exiles are already confirming with their cheering on social media. Almost all the organizations of the Chinese diaspora (better, diasporas) are non-political as well, and their satisfaction for the nomination of Rubio is quite revealing. It is justified not by a partisan stand but by Rubio’s limpid and constant criticism of the misdeeds of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
The son of immigrants from Cuba (who left the island before the Communist takeover), Rubio, a Roman Catholic, was born in Miami, Florida, in 1971. The father of four children, in 1996 he earned his Juris Doctor degree, cum laude, from the University of Miami School of Law in Coral Gables. In the same year he entered politics, joining the Republican Party. From 2000 to 2008, he was elected in the House of Representatives of Florida, serving as its Speaker from 2006 to 2008. He then joined Florida International University (FIU) in University Park to teach Political Science. He still does it part-time in the Department of Politics and International Relations, a branch of FIU’s Steven J. Green School of International and Public Affairs. In 2010, he was elected (with the endorsement of the Tea Party movement) to the federal Senate in Washington, D.C., where he still serves, representing Florida.
As a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he has always been an outspoken critic of the PRC and a strong supporter of the Republic of China in Taiwan. After his condemnation of the new security law passed in Hong Kong, by which Beijing de facto took the leadership of the former British colony over its puppet government, he was sanctioned in 2020 by China, alongside US Senators Ted Cruz, Tom Cotton, Josh Hawley, and Pat Toomey, Representative Chris Smith, and the heads of the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, the National Endowment for Democracy, the International Republican Institute, Human Rights Watch, and Freedom House.
A strong supporter of the rights of Uyghurs persecuted in the PRC, he has been an energetic member of the Executive-Congressional Commission on China—the independent and bipartisan agency of the US government for monitoring human rights and the rule of law in the PRC— serving at intervals also as its chairperson or co-chair. He has in fact been highly instrumental in introducing key legislation such as the “Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act” (H.R. 6256) in 2021 for preventing American entities to directly or indirectly use slave labor from the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, where the PRC regime notoriously employs it, and stopping imports of goods produced in such way.
Rubio stated that: “Forced labor is a horrific practice witnessed worldwide. In China, the Chinese Communist Party continues with its grotesque campaign of genocide against Uyghurs and other minorities. We have a moral duty to ensure our nation isn’t tied to any purchases tainted with the forced labor of humans. As the author of the first piece of legislation on Uyghur human rights in the world, I remain committed to ensuring we do more to counter this modern-day slavery practice.” And Beijing hasn’t forgotten Rubio recently saying of the PRC in “The Washington Post”: “The bottom line is that U.S. policymakers cannot afford to be complacent about the largest, most advanced adversary America has ever faced. That was true in 2015, and it will be even truer in 2025.”
Beyond Asia, Senator Rubio has been a staunch defender of liberty and human rights also in Cuba and Iran, Venezuela and the Russian Federation. Critics suggest that these would be good reasons to oppose Trump’s pick of his name as the next US Secretary of State, a position that at times is even more influential, internationally, that the Presidency itself. However, those who suffer under rogue regimes know that appeasement is never the answer.
For all his strength, Rubio shows in fact also a sweet personality and a wise mind, as those who have spent time with him may testify. After Trump’s nomination, Rubio has now to pass through the Senate’s confirmation. If he succeeds, he will perhaps provide the best chance in the next administration to revive former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s vision, who repeated time and again that religious liberty is at the top of a hierarchical pyramid of human rights.
