The GOP’s Nice Guy Wants to Put on a War Face Toward China

Sen. Tim Scott, one of the many underdogs in the Republican presidential slugfest, is now taking advice from the Pentagon’s former top Asia hand, three people familiar with the move told Foreign Policy, a decision that could help the South Carolina senator kill the perception that he’s a dove on China. 

People close to Scott have been briefed by Randall Schriver, an assistant secretary of defense for Indo-Pacific security affairs during the Trump administration and former George W. Bush-era State Department official who now runs the Project 2049 Institute, an Arlington-based think tank that advocates for the U.S. defense of Taiwan. 

Schriver has traveled to Taiwan twice since leaving government in 2019, including for a meeting with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen. Schriver’s institution has pushed for the United States to expand military cooperation with Taiwan, including through military exercises and by speeding up U.S. weapons that are stuck in a $19 billion multiyear backlog of Taiwanese purchases, such as air defenses. 

“They are really trying to beef up Tim’s foreign-policy chops. He’s got a long way to go to make Republicans happy,” said one person familiar with the advisory effort. 

Schriver told Foreign Policy in an email that though he is an “enthusiastic” Scott supporter, he has not yet been asked to formally join the campaign. “On a volunteer basis I have offered my thoughts to folks at Great Opportunity Policy, a C4 that aligns closely to the senator’s views, and to others who I understand to be in his policy orbit,” Schriver wrote. 

With Taiwan experiencing regular Chinese incursions into its air defense identification zone in the past several years, Schriver has called for the United States to drop the use of the term “One China” to describe relations with Taiwan, since the policy, first outlined by then-President Richard Nixon after his 1972 visit to China, was predicated on Beijing’s peaceful relations with Taiwan. Under the policy, the United States recognizes the People’s Republic of China as the only official government of the country. 

While Schriver has been notching resume bullets to prove he’s a rock-ribbed Washington China hawk, conservatives in Washington don’t think Scott, the Senate’s only Black Republican, is tough enough on China. First appointed to the U.S. Senate a decade ago from a Charleston-based House district by then-South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley—a current rival for the GOP presidential nomination—Scott has twice won reelection and become the ranking member on the Senate Banking Committee. 

“It doesn’t matter who your advisors are, what I’m looking for from Scott … is when you say, ‘Oh, China is really important, China is really important,’ what are you willing to do that matters?” said Derek Scissors, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. “Because if China is big and important, and a threat in some ways, then it’s going to cost us something to deal with that.”

Scissors listed House Financial Services Committee Chairman Patrick McHenry and the Senate Finance Committee’s ranking member, Mike Crapo, as two other Republicans who are close to the U.S. financial community and have taken softer stances on China.

From that perch that oversees both the short-form video service TikTok and outbound U.S. investment to China, Scott has faced criticism. Politico reported earlier this month that Scott watered down a bipartisan bill spearheaded by Sens. John Cornyn and Bob Casey that would have given the U.S. government far-reaching powers to block deals with Chinese tech companies. 

“He seems to deserve the criticism he’s gotten so far,” said one Republican source, speaking on condition of anonymity to talk candidly about the presidential contender. “He has a completely undistinguished China record in the Senate, and it’s partly a blank, but there are those areas where he’s been engaged where he seems to be weak.” Scott had previously backed proposed rules to give the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States broader powers to crack down on China’s ability to purchase American firms critical to national security and has accused Beijing of accelerating the flow of the deadly opioid fentanyl across U.S. borders. 

Though former President Donald Trump has continued to dominate national polls, Scott has risen to third place in the Republican field behind a campaign centered on his Christian faith, kitchen table issues, targeting the “radical left,” and raising his national profile by spending heavily on TV ads. A free-trade advocate who backed the North American Free Trade Agreement, Scott has also called U.S. support for Ukraine a “vital national interest,” a sharp contrast with both Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Trump, who the South Carolina senator backed nearly 97 percent of the time in congressional votes. 

The China question remains in the air. Trump levied tariffs. Current U.S President Joe Biden left them, and levied some bans on critical exports. But 50 years after Nixon opened China, it’s the closing that is crucial.

“The no. 1 problem actor on China in the Republican Party by far is Trump,” said Scissors. “[Scott] has plenty of company.”