In new Congress, a bipartisan push to take on China

For decades, the U.S. line was that embracing China in the world economy and global order would inevitably help modernize and liberalize that country. Now, there’s a growing sense among members of Congress that this was a miscalculation – and there’s an urgent need to wake up and correct course.

In a rare show of bipartisan agreement, Republicans and Democrats across a range of committees are highlighting what they see as the threat posed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and pushing to counter its ideological, economic, and military advances. 

“This is an existential struggle over what life will look like in the 21st century – and the most fundamental freedoms are at stake,” said Chair Mike Gallagher at the first hearing of a new House select committee on China.

“The CCP laughed at our naiveté while they took advantage of our good faith,” added the Wisconsin Republican, a former Marine intelligence officer. “But the era of wishful thinking is over.”

The select committee hearing, held in prime time, was one of several on Tuesday that underscored how serious this new Congress is about taking on China, with the House Foreign Affairs and Financial Services committees also making the case for a tougher approach toward Beijing.

Those efforts have gained new urgency in the wake of the recent Chinese spy balloon incident, and frustration with China’s lack of transparency about the COVID-19 pandemic. FBI Director Christopher Wray this week blamed China for interfering with efforts to determine how the pandemic began, and confirmed publicly for the first time that the FBI believes it started with a lab leak in Wuhan, an assessment made with “moderate confidence.” That theory, which China has criticized as political and which was initially dismissed by many in the United States, garnered renewed attention with news that the Department of Energy also now views a lab leak as the most likely source, albeit with “low confidence.” Four other intelligence elements concluded that the virus emerged naturally, also with “low confidence.”

Among the key concerns for Congress is China’s theft of intellectual property, giving it an unearned leg up economically and militarily. There is also growing momentum to counter the influence it wields via the social media platform TikTok, which is increasingly becoming a source of news for Americans and also collects personal information that Beijing could exploit. This week the Biden administration required the app to be removed from all government devices within 30 days.

On the security front, there’s growing concern about a potential takeover of Taiwan, which produces more than 90% of the advanced chips used in smartphones, laptops, and military equipment. And human rights issues, particularly the mass incarceration, sterilization, and forced labor of China’s Muslim Uyghur population, are also at the top of the list.

That’s not to say there’s total agreement on these complex issues – between or even within parties. Within the Biden administration, economic interests argue for more engagement, while national security interests take a more hawkish approach. Amid those divides, Congress could shift the balance by pressuring the White House to take further steps on TikTok, for example, or on U.S. military assistance to Taiwan. That pressure campaign includes, in part, an effort to galvanize American citizens by driving home to them that the CCP is not a faraway problem but one that threatens the American way of life. 

“Americans don’t want to be in a cold war, hot war, a clash of civilizations – or any kind of hostilities with any country,” says Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi of Illinois, the top Democrat on the House select committee on China, in a phone interview. “But they want to protect themselves, their interests, and their values.” 

“We have many tools” 

The success of any recalibration on China policy will ride in large part on lawmakers’ ability to carve out specific areas of bipartisan cooperation in an otherwise fractious Congress. And it will require allaying some colleagues’ concerns that the efforts to prevent a bigger conflict with China may inadvertently provoke one.

Rep. Andy Kim, a New Jersey Democrat on the select committee, takes issue with what he sees as the recent proliferation of “unhelpful metaphors” – such as referring to a new “cold war.” 

“We’re framing this problem with such an immediate pessimism. That puts us in a place where we’re forgetting our strength,” he says in a phone interview. “When you’re running a race, you don’t need to spend all your time trying to slow down your competitor.”

The framing is important, he adds, because it affects the “temperature” in the country, and determines how the U.S. will respond. It also affects America’s ability to build coalitions. 

“We have many tools we need to focus on,” says Representative Kim. “It can’t just be about our military and our military strength.”

Some of the tools proposed in congressional bills include isolating China financially, including through the International Monetary Fund and financial sanctions on senior Chinese officials to deter and/or punish aggression toward Taiwan. Another pair of bills in the House and Senate would open the way for sanctions against TikTok. Others involve supporting allies facing economic coercion by China and reducing Beijing’s financial influence abroad by removing China’s designation as a developing country, which qualifies it for low-interest loans. 

Another key tool is preventing U.S. technology and investment from fueling the rise of companies connected to the Chinese government. House Foreign Affairs Chair Michael McCaul, a Texas Republican, focused much of his hearing yesterday on export controls, grilling Undersecretary Alan Estevez of the Department of Commerce about why its Bureau of Industry and Security approved more than $23 billion in licenses to sell U.S. technology to blacklisted Chinese companies in just one quarter last year.

“If BIS continues to mindlessly greenlight sensitive technology sales, the CCP has proven they will use our own inventions against us,” said Chair McCaul.

Framing the relationship between China and the U.S. as a “race” incorrectly implies that the two countries each have their own lane – and are staying in it, says Ivan Kanapathy, who directed the National Security Council’s China and Taiwan work under the Trump and early Biden administrations. 

“If you want to call it a competition, it’s not a race – it’s a boxing match,” says Mr. Kanapathy, now a senior associate with the Freeman Chair in China Studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Irreconcilable systems?

Representative Krishnamoorthi says the U.S. wants to ensure a market-based economic system; freedom of thought, assembly, and speech; and a world that is “hospitable” to democratic values. 

“What folks have to understand is that in [CCP] Chairman Xi’s conceptualization, these particular values are not consistent with his ideology necessarily,” says Mr. Krishnamoorthi. He emphasizes that the select committee’s scrutiny focuses on the CCP, not on the people of China or people of Chinese origin, and cautions against inflaming anti-Asian sentiment in the U.S.

A video clip played at the beginning of the select committee hearing quoted Chinese leader Xi Jinping as saying that “our struggle and contest with Western countries is irreconcilable, so it will inevitably be long, complicated, and sometimes very sharp.” It also showed a clip of him garnering applause when he said, according to translated subtitles, that any foreign force that tried to bully, oppress, or subjugate the Chinese people would “bash their heads bloody on a great wall of steel.”

Tong Yi, a Chinese human rights advocate who now lives in the U.S., told the select committee Tuesday, “In the U.S., we have to face the fact that we have helped to feed the baby dragon of the CCP.”

Mr. Xi now sees a “fleeting window of opportunity” to act while he perceives weakness in the U.S., said another witness, former national security adviser H.R. McMaster. He cited a joint statement between the Chinese leader and Russian President Vladimir Putin on the eve of the Beijing Olympics last year, which he summarized as, “Hey, United States, West, free world – you’re over. It’s time for a new era of international relations – and we’re in charge now.”

In the statement, Russia and China criticized unnamed global powers of efforts to employ “unfair competition practices, intensify geopolitical rivalry, fuel antagonism and confrontation, and seriously undermine the international security order and global strategic stability.” It laid out an alternative vision of a more multilateral global system. 

“It’s not a choice between Washington and Beijing,” said Lt. Gen. McMaster before the congressional panel. “It’s a choice between sovereignty and servitude.”