WEDNESDAY 3/1/23
By Todd Lassa
In the refreshingly bipartisan House Select Committee on Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party’s first public hearing Tuesday evening Republicans and Democrats pretty much agreed that U.S. acquiescence to China is boosting its economy and global prominence at the cost of our own.
“We may call this a strategic competition, but it is not a polite tennis match,” Committee Chairman Mike Gallagher (R-WI) said in his opening statement. “This is an existential struggle over what life will look like in the 21st Century.”
At times, Democrats used their cross-exam time to promote Democratic policy, while Republicans used their time on the mic to promote Republican ideals. Even then, the committee’s three hours of testimony was almost unnaturally civil, with a panel consisting mostly of moderates from both sides of the aisle. Unlike an earlier House committee hearing earlier Tuesday on oversight of U.S. funding for Ukraine, there was no Matt Gaetz (R-FL).
There was Rep. Andy Barr (R-KY), who warned the federal government “should not embrace Chinese-style central planning.
“We should not try to counter China by being more like China.”
Barr followed Rep. Shontel Brown (D-OH), whose questions prompted witness Scott Paul, president of the Alliance for American Manufacturing, to say that public investment was needed – including infrastructure spending -- for local manufacturing of computer chips and other products currently dominated by Chinese industry.
Rep. Andy Kim (D-NJ) warned that Congress’ potential failure to raise the federal debt ceiling this year would show weakness in our democracy to the Chinese.
“Democracies that reach high don’t always reach the skies,” responded witness Matt Pottinger, who served as deputy national security advisor under the Trump administration. “People understand that it’s not always going to look pretty.”
Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN) .
“I believe fentanyl is committing diplomatic blackmail,” he said, and Pottinger cited FBI Director Christopher Wray’s assessment that a lab in Wuhan, China “most likely” released COVID-19 to result in the pandemic. (An Energy Department assessment leaked to The Wall Street Journal last week says it has “low confidence” in that conclusion.)
Rep. Dusty Johnson (R-SD) noted that China has increased its holdings in farmland outside its own borders by 1,000% in recent years. While Chinese entities, mostly governmental have purchased relatively little farmland in the U.S., it’s mostly close to military system installations, replied witness H.R. McMaster, Trump administration national security advisor in 2017 and 2018.
Rep. Jake Auchincloss (D-MA) suggested then-President Trump’s withdrawal from an Asian trade pact with China was a boon to the Chinese president’s plans for world domination.
“January 6, 2021 was Xi Jinping’s best day in office,” Auchincloss said. He suggested negotiation of a new trade agreement involving the U.S. and Taiwan.
The hearing’s fourth witness, Chinese dissident Tong Yi (above), said tech experts here should “research how to bring down the great firewall,” China’s blocking of Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Google. “The truth is powerful on its own,” she said, and journalists and rights lawyers are “heavily repressed” inside China.
The U.S. must watch not only the social media site TikTok, but also WeChat, Tong said, “a must-have inside China, but also a must have” for Chinese-Americans to communicate with their relatives inside China who must self-repress what they convey to those relatives to keep from being blocked by Xi’s government.
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