Cotton Warns Against China Trying to Steal Coronavirus Vaccine from U.S., Urges ‘Hard Look’ at Visas Granted to Chinese Nationals

Sunday, during an appearance on Fox News Channel’s “Sunday Morning Futures,” Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) said, based on the past, the Chinese government was likely still attempting to steal intellectual property from the United States, including a coronavirus vaccine.

“[T]he Chinese Communist Party has been stealing America’s intellectual property for decades, and they aren’t going to magically stop in the middle of a pandemic,” he said. “In almost every state in the union, there are active cases against Chinese nationals. In Arkansas, for instance, they are accused of having stolen proprietary genomes of our farmers in East Arkansas. But in the middle of a pandemic, what’s the most valuable intellectual property in the world? It’s the research that our great laboratories and life science companies are doing on prophylactic drugs, therapeutic drugs, and ultimately a vaccine. So I have little doubt that the Chinese intelligence services are actively trying to steal America’s intellectual property as it relates to the virus that they unleashed on the world, because, of course, they want to be the country that claims credit for finding those drugs or finding a vaccine, and then use it as leverage against the rest of the world.”

Cotton told FNC’s Maria Bartiromo a “very hard look” should be taken at Chinese Nationals coming to the United States to study in specific fields.

“[I]t’s a scandal to me that we have trained so many of the Chinese Communist Party’s brightest minds to go back to China to compete for our jobs, to take our business, and ultimately to steal our property and design weapons and other devices that can be used against the American people. So, I think we need to take a very hard look at the visas that we give the Chinese nationals to come to the United States to study, especially at the post-graduate level in advanced scientific and technological fields. If Chinese students want to come here and study Shakespeare and the Federalist Papers, that’s what they need to learn from America. They don’t need to learn quantum computing and artificial intelligence from America.”

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