Rep. Rick Larsen (D-Wash.) said the formation of the House Select Committee on China is a great chance to improve the relationship and oversight between the U.S. and China.
“The Select Committee is an opportunity for Congress to improve oversight of the U.S.-China relationship and enhance coordination of policy. However, the Select Committee must address legitimate national security concerns and rising competition without adopting a Cold War mentality,” Larsen said in a statement provided to State Newswire. “The U.S. and China are the world’s two largest economies and carbon emitters; smart engagement is critical to advancing U.S. interests.”
The Select Committee will push back against the Chinese Community Party (CCP) in a bipartisan manner as China continues to "commit genocide, obscure the origins of the coronavirus pandemic, steal hundreds of billions of dollars worth of American intellectual property, and threaten Taiwan," according to Rep. Mike Gallagher, (R-Wisc.) Even though the U.S. has a divided government, it has the opportunity to present a united front against CCP aggression, Gallagher, who was selected as chairman of the Select Committee, stated in a news release from his office.
Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.) said that for more than 30 years after the Tiananmen Square massacre, Congress was divided between the majority in the House and the Senate “who favored unfettered engagement and trade without serious human rights conditionality,” according to a YouTube video posted by his office. Human rights and trade were delinked by President Clinton on May 26, 1994, and Smith said he gave a press conference at the time saying how serious that was to allow profits to trump human rights.
The National Association of Scholars maintains a list of graduate students, researchers, visiting scholars and professors who have been charged by U.S. authorities with espionage and selling secrets to China, among other allegations, America First Policy Institute (AFPI) reported in October 2022. Chinese attempts to gather technology and intelligence from American universities are deliberate and premeditated, the AFPI states.
Even though China moved to regulate fentanyl and two of its precursors in 2019, the nation is still the top supplier of fentanyl in the U.S., although most of it is supplied indirectly, according to the Brookings Institute (BI). The BI report describes China’s cooperation in counternarcotics efforts as “highly selective, self-serving, limited, and subordinated to its geopolitical interests.” China has refused to accept co-responsibility with Mexico for the fentanyl epidemic and maintains that Mexican law enforcement should step up, even as more and more Chinese criminal actors expand their operations within Mexico. Approximately 1 million Americans have died from drug overdoses since 1999.
The Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) has reported the Chinese government is complicit in the use of Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities (Chinese citizens) as forced labor in factories all across China. More than 80,000 people from these ethnic groups have been forcibly removed from the Xinjiang province to work against their will in these factories. Workers are forced to live in segregated dorms, put through ideology training in their off hours, kept under constant surveillance, and unable to practice their religions. Companies known to have benefited from this labor include Apple, BMW, Gap, Huawei, Nike, Samsung, Sony and Volkswagen among others.
Politico reported that in a recent House vote, lawmakers voted 365-65 to create a House Select Committee on China. No members had been named other than Gallagher. The committee will focus on short-term military readiness in East Asia and the long-term economic competition posed by China.
