Uyghur and Tibetan activists have welcomed U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s nomination of Marco Rubio to be the next secretary of state, saying they hope the senator’s track record of defending human rights in China will continue in his role as America’s top diplomat. The son of Cuban migrants and a longtime foreign policy “hawk” when it comes to the Chinese Communist Party, Rubio was named by Trump on Wednesday as his choice to replace Antony Blinken, who has served through President Donald Trump’s nearly four years in office.
Rubio would be the first sitting U.S. secretary of state to have been sanctioned by the Chinese government, having been blacklisted by Beijing in retaliation for U.S. sanctions on Chinese officials involved in the genocide of the Uyghurs and the crackdown in Hong Kong.