The House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party is urging congressional action to address the Uyghur genocide and deter China from further threatening Taiwan.
The panel, created at the start of the year to draw attention to China’s human-rights abuses in Xinjiang and the possibility the country might invade Taiwan, issued a set of policy recommendations adopted unanimously on Wednesday.
“This is only a first step, and we will continue operating in a bipartisan way to send a message that we are committed to deterrence in the Taiwan Strait and that we won’t turn a blind eye as the CCP commits genocide, ‘the crime above all crimes,’ against the Uyghur people,” said the committee’s chairman, Mike Gallagher (R., Wis.), and ranking member Raja Krishnamoorthi (D., Ill.) in a statement.
The committee released its recommendations before Congress considers the annual National Defense Authorization Act, which sets policy for the Department of Defense.
In a statement, Gallagher summarized what would happen if China were to invade Taiwan. The committee gamed out various scenarios last month.
“80,000 PLA troops on the island of Taiwan. Runways on Guam destroyed. Dozens of our F-35s vaporized. Our long-range munitions largely depleted in just six days. Financial markets tanking. Shipping insurance halted. Global trade frozen,” said Gallagher, adding that the committee’s recommendations are to ensure this scenario stays fictional.
The committee laid out ten proposals to strengthen Washington’s hand in the Indo-Pacific and weaken Beijing’s.
The first is to address the fact that neither the U.S. nor Taiwan has nearly enough critical munitions in the theater to deter the CCP. The committee recommended that multi-year procurements be used to rapidly increase the number of long-range missiles and unmanned vehicles the U.S. has in the region.
The committee also urged that delayed shipments of arms and other military equipment to Taiwan be sped up. Joint military trainings with the U.S. also ought to be increased, the lawmakers said.
Additionally, Gallagher and his colleagues think it is essential to better the cybersecurity infrastructure of the U.S. and Taiwan, both of which are vulnerable to Chinese cyberattacks.
On the same day the policy recommendations were released, Microsoft announced that Chinese state-sponsored hackers had compromised critical U.S. cyber infrastructure across numerous industries.
“The attack is carried out by Volt Typhoon, a state-sponsored actor based in China that typically focuses on espionage and information gathering. Microsoft assesses with moderate confidence that this Volt Typhoon campaign is pursuing development of capabilities that could disrupt critical communications infrastructure between the United States and Asia region during future crises,” the company said in a statement.
The committee also released a set of policy recommendations to address the Uyghur genocide, which Gallagher said was motivated by a March hearing in which CCP atrocities were detailed.
“During my time in Congress I have never heard testimony more disturbing than the firsthand accounts of torture, forced sterilization, and mass internment that we heard at the Select Committee’s hearing on the persecution of the Uyghur people. These atrocities easily clear any reasonable definition of genocide, the ‘crime above all crimes,'” Gallagher said.
Members of the committee agreed to call on Congress to further isolate Chinese technology companies that supply the equipment necessary for the CCP’s human-rights abuses in Xinjiang.
Gallagher and his colleagues proposed legislation prohibiting the federal retirement Thrift Savings Plan and other state and local pension funds from investing in Chinese companies that are under U.S. human-rights sanctions.
Additionally, there was a call to strengthen enforcement of existing law against imports of goods made using Uyghur forced labor.
“Let’s send a bipartisan message that Congress will stand up to genocide,” Gallagher said.