With the establishment of a new committee this week, Congress is embarking on a bold, bipartisan effort to train America’s attention on the epochal threat posed by the Chinese Communist Party.
On Tuesday, the House of Representatives passed a resolution approving the creation of a new Select Committee on Strategic Competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party. It passed with votes from 146 Democratic members — a majority of the caucus — and overwhelming Republican support. The committee’s 16 members are widely expected to include some of each party’s most serious national-security thinkers.
The committee’s chairman will be Representative Mike Gallagher. Throughout his relatively short time in Congress, Gallagher, a former Marine intelligence officer, has distinguished himself as one of Congress’s most thoughtful leaders on foreign policy. He’s led dozens of bills on everything from blocking Chinese military companies’ access to American capital to boosting Taiwan’s defenses to shoring up U.S. supply chains. Gallagher has pledged to bring an intellectually serious tenor to the panel. And the Democrats who join him on the panel are expected to be similarly earnest.
The committee’s main tools are expected to include a series of hearings showcasing the precise nature of the threat posed by the Chinese regime, and the development of a set of legislative proposals that it will then send along to other congressional committees to advance themselves. In short, the committee will be a clearinghouse for concerted congressional action on China, spanning trade, espionage, defense, foreign infiltration, and more.
While there will be some unfortunate limitations to the committee’s work — Democrats might block any initiatives that are too critical of the Biden administration’s drive for climate cooperation with Beijing or that probe the origins of Covid — the committee’s hearings will presumably lay out a case for a sea change in how Americans ought to think about China.
Gallagher said on Wednesday that Disney CEO Bob Iger and NBA commissioner Adam Silver will be called to testify, to discuss how their companies have each taken steps to placate Beijing’s preferences. Hopefully, other C-suite executives implicated in tacitly pro-CCP activities, and regime apologists of all stripes, will be called to account for their actions. Other compelling witnesses could include Chinese dissidents targeted by CCP spies on U.S. soil, state legislators whom Chinese diplomats have attempted to coerce, and the American executives of Chinese tech firms such as TikTok and Huawei, in addition to the lobbyists who take on Chinese government entities as their clients.
The new China committee ought to also work with other permanent panels, particularly Armed Services, to bring Washington’s conversations about a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan to a broader public audience. It is imperative to continue ringing the alarm in light of intensifying Chinese saber-rattling and worrying signals that the U.S. lacks the defense-industrial capacity and the willpower to meet the threat. Lawmakers owe it to the American people to explain where things stand and the hard choices that they might face in the near future.
In other words, the committee has much consequential work ahead.