Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., warned China's aggression in its western provinces sends a threatening message to the rest of the world.

"China sees its giant western provinces as a critical buffer against rival powers," Cotton said in a Hudson Institute speech. "China also uses these provinces as a staging ground to project military and economic power into Eurasia – so ever since Mao took over the country in 1949, the regime has done everything it can to bring these territories to heel, not least by overwhelming and erasing the native minorities through population transfers."

The Washington Free Beacon published a clip of Cotton's remarks.

Cotton then highlighted allegations China has forced into camps a million Muslims who live in the country's Xinjiang region, calling then "brutal police tactics."

"China has a plan for the world and it's as concrete as the prison cells where it keeps its dissenters," Cotton said. "Make no mistake: the brutal police tactics in Xinjiang are not just an assault on that province's native people, although they are surely that. They're also an assault on the American-led world order and a disturbing premonition of an alternative world order, one controlled by the Chinese Communist party and one that ends in Room 101."

Room 101 was a reference to George Orwell's "1984," a dystopian novel published in 1949.

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