GOP senator says China won't ever behave in 'rational' fashion, slams liberal groups for wishful thinking

Tennessee Republican Sen. Bill Hagerty criticized the liberal groups that called on the Biden administration to soften its stance on China, saying the U.S. adversary will not behave in a “rational” manner on its own in a Saturday interview.

"We’ve seen this movie before in the Clinton administration," Hagerty told Fox News in an interview. "We allowed China into the WTO [World Trade Organization]. The thought back then: ‘Let’s expose China to our market economy, let’s give them the opportunity to see how we behave, let’s be conciliatory to China, let’s look the other way, and eventually they’ll behave in a more rational, more market-like fashion’.  "That is not the China that exists," he added. "We’ve got to take the world as it is, not as we wish it would be."