Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., called sanctions against him by China "toothless" and said they won’t have much effect.
His comments came Tuesday in a column posted by Fox News.
“China’s Foreign Ministry announced Monday that it will sanction me and 10 other Americans, including three of my Senate Republican colleagues, for supposedly ‘behav[ing] badly on Hong Kong-related issues,’” he said.
“These toothless sanctions won’t have much effect on me, but that’s because they were never about me in the first place. They’re meant to scare potential critics of the Chinese Communist Party into shameful silence and even complicity.
“Sadly, we know that scare tactics and threats can silence even powerful people, especially those who are financially compromised by China. That’s why you won’t see supposedly ‘progressive’ executives and superstars in the NBA denouncing China’s forced labor and other human-rights abuses.”
He said the Chinese Communist Party is wrong in believing it can stop its critics with threats. Cotton vowed: “We’ll never stop fighting to defend the many victims of Chinese Communism.”
He claimed the CCP’s goal is “to crush its competitors and extend a high-tech tyranny – or 'socialism with Chinese characteristics.'" But he said the U.S. is leading the world in fighting back.
“That’s why the party is lashing out now to suppress its critics,” Cotton said. “But these scare tactics are doomed to fail.
“If the Chinese Communists think we’ve ‘behaved badly’ so far by opposing their tyranny, I have two words for them: just wait.”
Jeffrey Rodack ✉
Jeffrey Rodack, who has nearly a half century in news as a senior editor and city editor for national and local publications, has covered politics for Newsmax for nearly seven years.
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