Veteran commentator Michael Schuman has claimed that the threat to democracy posed by Chinese President Xi Jinping forced him to become a China hawk.

The Bloomberg columnist, who has worked in Beijing and Hong Kong for the past two decades, said he believed in China’s potential but felt betrayed.

In an article for Politico, Schuman wrote that he did not want to be a China hawk as it went against his belief in openness, but the current Chinese leadership left him no choice. The leadership is a threat to democracy, and those who care about civil liberties can no longer pretend that isn’t the case, he said.

Xi wants a world where China “dominates the commanding heights of the global economy and dictates the rules of international diplomacy and discourse,” and such a world is not safe for democracy, Schuman lamented.

He called China’s leadership “a nasty bunch, crushing any dissent with swift brutality.”

Schuman has been all around the country but said he felt increasingly worried about being detained in China.

China’s leaders have been losing interest in cooperating with the U.S., and dialogue could not move Chinese officials to address American concerns about their unfair treatment of U.S. companies, Schuman said. The developments over the past three years were what made him truly hawkish.

In the past two decades, the U.S. has helped China enter the global economy, but Schuman said this has not advanced human rights in China. Technology has not freed the Chinese people but instead has put them under surveillance, he said, adding that Xi’s government has locked up Uyghurs in Xinjiang and broken a treaty with the United Kingdom to jail pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong.

Xi is upholding China’s autocratic system, and it presents a greater threat to the world’s democracies than any edge it might achieve in trade or technology, he said. Sanctions on China must be imposed for its human rights abuses, he added.

“The only way to contend with today’s China is for more people to become China hawks. That’s a terrible solution. But the alternative is worse,” Schuman said.

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