China never seen a US ‘president this tough’: Bolton

US national security adviser John Bolton says Donald Trump is the toughest US president China has ever seen, warning Washington will adopt a much tougher approach to Beijing.

Bolton said Trump believed China had misused the international order for far too long and not enough Americans had stood up to it.

“Now’s the time to do it,” Bolton said in a radio interview on the Hugh Hewitt Show recorded on Thursday and aired on Friday.

“They’ve never seen an American president this tough before. I think their behavior needs to be adjusted in the trade area, in the international, military and political areas, in a whole range of areas,” he said.

“Perhaps we’ll see at the G20 meeting in Argentina next month Xi Jinping willing to come to talk turkey on some of these issues,” he added.

His remarks come amid an intensifying trade war between the two countries which Trump launched to improve the ailing US economy.

The Trump administration imposed tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese goods in the middle of September. It prompted Beijing to retaliate with tariffs on $60 billion worth of American products, dropping Chinese imports of American products by 9 percent last month.

Bolton also expressed concern about military drills China regularly conducts in the disputed South China Sea in order to assert its sovereignty over the hotly-contested region.

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He described an occasion, where a US warship had a near collision with a Chinese vessel last month in the area, as “dangerous,” claiming Washington was determined to keep international sea lanes open.

“This is something the Chinese need to understand,” he said, adding that US allies including Britain and Australia were also sailing through the area to make this point.

“We’re going to do a lot more on that,” he said. “I think we could see more exploitation of mineral resources in the South China Sea with or without Chinese cooperation.”

China claims sovereignty over most of the resource-rich South China Sea, through which $5 trillion in shipping trade passes annually, despite competing claims from Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam.

Bolton said what he called China’s violation of international norms in trade and business had enabled it to gain substantial economic and military strength.

“If they’re put back in the proper place they would be if they weren’t allowed to steal our technology, their military capabilities would be substantially reduced. And a lot of the tensions we see caused by China would be reduced.”

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