WASHINGTON – The newly formed House Committee on Economic Competition between america and China holds its first hearing Tuesday night, ending a day of maneuvers on the Capitol to carry Beijing accountable for recent breaches of national security.
A special committee on strategic competition between america and the Chinese Communist Party was created in January, shortly after the Republicans won a majority within the House of Representatives. Its inaugural event, scheduled for 7 p.m. EST, comes as lawmakers within the House and Senate refocus on China after the US shot down a CCP surveillance balloon earlier this month.
Committee Chairman Representative Mike Gallagher said the hearing can be held listen to human rights.
“We would call it a ‘strategic contest’, nevertheless it’s not a polite tennis match,” Gallagher, R-Wis., said in his opening statement, in response to a duplicate reviewed prior to the hearing. “It’s an existential fight for what life will probably be like within the twenty first century – probably the most basic freedoms are at stake.”
An example is the US government’s attack on the favored social media platform TikTok. The House Foreign Affairs Committee on Monday announced plans to advertise laws giving the president the facility to ban Chinese app TikTok within the US, which boasts greater than a billion energetic users.
TikTok has been within the crosshairs of lawmakers since former President Donald Trump proposed using executive powers in 2020 to ban the app on security grounds.
Representative Mike Gallagher (R-WI) (C), Chairman of the House Select Committee on Strategic Competition between america and the Chinese Communist Party, joins Congresswoman Elise Stefanik (R-NY) (L) and Majority Whip Steve Scalise ( R-LA) for a press conference after the GOP caucus meeting on the Capitol Republican National Committee offices on February 28, 2023 in Washington, DC.
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The Biden administration also imposed sanctions on six Chinese aviation corporations supporting the country’s military balloon program after the US military shot down a Chinese spy balloon that drifted over the US a few month ago.
Gallagher and Representative Raja Krishnamoorthi, D-Ailing., Member of the Senior Select Committee, called a balloon “violation of American sovereignty” in a joint statement.
The administration’s move prompted the drafting of several bills designed to bolster U.S. national security against China. Seven of the ten bills passed Tuesday by the House of Representatives for Financial Services concerned China or its neighbor Taiwan. While they’d still must purge the complete House and Senate before becoming law, the quantity and speed of anti-China bills passing through the lower house point to a growing rift between Washington and Beijing.
On Tuesday, the Sejm adopted the next bills:
The Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs also interviewed witnesses on Tuesday about enhancing U.S. national security through sanctions and export controls.
“The Chinese government has made its goals clear: to dominate high-tech and global strategic supply chains,” said Senator Sherrod Brown of D-Ohio, chairman of the committee, within the opening statement. “The CCP’s civil-military fusion policy blurs the road separating business and military use of finished goods – and the technologies that go into them.”
Gallagher will repeat those statements at Tuesday night’s hearing.
“The CCP laughed at our naivety while exploiting our good faith,” Gallagher will say of the US’s previous economic approach. or maneuver us into submission.”
Matthew Pottinger, former US Deputy National Security Advisor; former US National Security Advisor HR McMaster; Yong Ti, Chinese human rights ombudsman; and Scott Paul, president of the Alliance for American Manufacturing, are to testify on the trial.