COLUMBIA, South Carolina: Former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley on Tuesday criticised former President Donald Trump for being too friendly to China during his time in office, while also warning that weak support for Ukraine would “only encourage” China to invade Taiwan.
Haley, a Republican presidential candidate running against Trump, said in a speech at the American Enterprise Institute that Trump was “almost singularly focused” on the US-China trade relationship but ultimately did “too little about the rest of the Chinese threat.”
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Specifically, Haley noted that Trump failed to rally US allies “against the Chinese threat” and that he had congratulated Chinese President Xi Jinping on the 70th anniversary of Communist Party rule in China.
“That sends a wrong message to the world,” Haley said. “Chinese communism must be condemned, never congratulated.”
Haley’s comments, promoted by her presidential campaign as “a major foreign policy speech”, came a week and a half after US Secretary of State Antony Blinken held talks with Xi in Beijing. Blinken said they had agreed to “stabilise” badly deteriorated US-China ties, but there was little indication that either country was prepared to bend from positions on issues including trade, Taiwan, human rights conditions in China and Hong Kong, Chinese military assertiveness in the South China Sea, and Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Haley did note that Trump imposed tariffs and other trade restrictions on the superpower, saying he “deserves credit for upending this bipartisan consensus.” But she added, “being clear-eyed is just not enough”.
Haley, who served for two years as Trump's ambassador to the United Nations, said President Joe Biden has been “much worse” when it comes to dealing with threats she said China poses to America's economic, domestic and military security. She also said that China's military buildup and aggression toward Taiwan shows that the nation is “preparing its people for war," a conflict she said would draw in the US and other global partners if left unchecked.
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