As Republican members of Congress prepare to roll out their “Commitment to America” plan, U.S. Reps. Kevin McCarthy and Michael McCaul discussed the importance of reining in the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
McCarthy (R-CA), whose district is in the Bakersfield area, pushed for the formation of a task force two years ago to put an end to the CCP “assault” on America, detailing the threat it poses to our national security.
“For 50 years, the Chinese Communist Party has launched an assault on the American way of life, on our economy, on our jobs, on our companies, on our culture, on our institutions, on our very future,” McCarthy said during a Houston media conference. “They’ve unleashed a pandemic, monopolized supply chains, stolen our jobs and intellectual property and placed propagandists in our media, in our research centers, in our high schools, in our colleges and even in our PTA meetings.”
Houston was a fitting location for the press conference, as it was just two years ago that the Trump administration closed the Chinese consulate in Houston after unveiling what then Secretary of State Mike Pompey termed a “den of spies” that stole technology.
McCaul (R-TX), whose district is primarily between Houston and Austin, said the theft of technology predates that 2020 incident by decades. In 1997, he prosecuted a case where it was shown that the director of Chinese intelligence and aerospace was putting money into someone’s Hong Kong bank account that then went into former President Bill Clinton’s campaign.
“Why is this so important? Because it’s come full circle,” McCaul said. “What did they want back then? They wanted to get in the WTO, but also they wanted technology.”
Eventually, China constructed a hypersonic guided missile that can carry a nuclear warhead and that was “built on the backbone of American technology.”
“That’s going to stop when we take back the majority. That has to stop,” McCaul said.
In the Commitment to America, “we lay out a number of proposals on how to bring that supply chain away from the Communist Party of China and back to America,” McCarthy said.
McCarthy and McCaul assert that the Biden administration is too soft on international industrial spying. With respect to the Houston consulate, 130 people were indicted for espionage.
“First of all, they shut down the China initiative that the Trump administration started,” McCaul said, referring to a move to prioritize espionage within the DOJ. “Guess what? Espionage hasn’t gone away, but the number of cases has gone way down as evidenced by the fact that they’ve only brought charges against 19 individuals and they’ve dismissed seven cases.”
McCaul contends that “weakness invites aggression.” He cited the fall of Afghanistan as opening an opportunity for Russian President Vladimir Putin to invade Ukraine and hinted a similar situation exists regarding Taiwan. Ultimately, he said, if we don’t stop our technology from getting into China’s hands, the CCP will build a “war machine that will then, in turn, be pointed at us.”
The Republicans also claim China is already engaged in a war with us, using fentanyl as the weapon of choice. Precursors for fentanyl come from China, and the drug is killing 300 Americans per day, they said.
McCarthy and McCaul said the time to save America is now, and America can do that by putting Republicans in control of Congress again. When they are again in the majority, they will work on legislation that will allow American companies to not only compete against China, but to win.
The Commitment to America plan is to be unveiled later this month in Pennsylvania.
