U.S. Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wisc.) told the Federal Newswire China Desk Podcast that he thinks of U.S.-China relations over the next century as "a short-term sprint and a long-term marathon."
Gallagher, chair of the newly created Select Committee on Competition with the Chinese Communist Party, spoke May 23 with the China Desk podcast's Stephen Yates about the committee's work and the relationship between the U.S. and China. He said the committee was created by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) "in order to ... create a sense of urgency around deterring aggression from the Chinese Communist Party before it's too late."
According to Gallagher, one of the committee's roles is the "policy coordinator, accelerator, and incubator" to discuss and advance foreign policy ideas and ensure actions are taken, "even in a divided government."
"The legislation and policy naturally transcend committee jurisdictions," Gallagher said in the interview. "No one committee is in charge of China, so you need a committee like ours to play a coordinating function."
Another role of the committee's is to "explain the 'why' to our colleagues and the American people," Gallagher said. "Why does it matter? Why should someone in Northeast Wisconsin or Washington DC care about the threat posed by the CCP?"
Gallagher said the current situation between the U.S. and China is "not a polite tennis match."
"I think it's an existential competition over what life will look like over the next hundred years, if not longer, because it's a whole-of-society competition," Gallagher said.
The next century will be "a short-term sprint and a long-term marathon, to borrow Pillsbury's very powerful metaphor," he said.
According to Gallagher, the "short-term sprint" is avoiding a war over Taiwan in the next five years. He said he believes the situation is "heading in a bad direction" and that "we've entered the window of maximum danger."
"If you don't win that sprint, it's as if you don't even qualify for the marathon," Gallagher said.
The "marathon" includes considering what life would be like if China dominated the world and the U.S. was relegated to being a "secondary power."
"I don't think they have in mind this balance of power between us," he said. "I think they have in mind global dominance."
He pointed to what is happening now inside China's government under President Xi Jinping, where "a model of techno-totalitarian control" is being perfected for export "not only throughout the rest of China, but increasingly abroad."
A world controlled by China "is a world in which you can't say what you think for fear of angering your overlords," according to Gallagher.
"It's a world in which various minority groups are attacked for the sake of Han supremacy," he said. "It's a world in which every aspect of your daily life is monitored by the party. It's Orwell on steroids."
Gallagher also spoke on the relationship between Mexican drug cartels and Chinese manufacturing companies that produce opioids, calling it an "unholy alliance" that the committee seeks to investigate.
"It used to be the case that a lot of this stuff was coming directly from China through the mail, by the way, into America," he said. "But now they're sending the precursors to Mexico."
He said the cartels then produce the lethal fentanyl pills that they traffic across the border into the U.S., where 80,000 Americans die each year from fentanyl overdoses.
"Think about it as a reverse opium war on America, with the caveat that we don't know how intentional it is," he said. "That is a massive problem for American society."
Gallagher represents Wisconsin's 8th congressional district. He attended Princeton University and served in the U.S. Marine Corps before running for Congress.
