Amid tense bilateral ties, US House panel holds first listening to on China; give attention to human rights

The US committee’s leaders noticed the listening to, the primary of what’s anticipated to be many over the following two years as Republicans maintain management of the House, as a part of an effort to persuade Americans why they need to care about competing with China.

US Representative Mike Gallagher (R-WI) walks to a House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence assembly on Capitol Hill in Washington (Photo: Reuters)

By Reuters: A brand new U.S. congressional choose committee on the competitors with China held its first listening to with a give attention to human rights on Tuesday, amid tense bilateral ties weeks after a suspected spy balloon flying over North America was shot down.

“This is not a polite tennis match. This is an existential struggle over what life will look like in the 21st century – and the most fundamental freedoms are at stake,” Representative Mike Gallagher, Republican chairman of the House of Representatives Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), mentioned as he opened the listening to.

The committee’s leaders noticed the listening to, the primary of what’s anticipated to be many over the following two years as Republicans maintain management of the House, as a part of an effort to persuade Americans why they need to care about competing with China, and to “selectively decouple” the U.S. and Chinese economies.

“Over the last three decades, both Democrats and Republicans underestimated the CCP, and assumed that trade and investment would inevitably lead to democracy and greater security in the Indo-Pacific… Instead, the opposite happened,” mentioned Representative Raja Krishnamoorthi, the highest Democrat on the choose committee, in his opening remarks.

Chinese dissidents attended the listening to. In the previous couple of days, Gallagher and different committee members held a number of occasions to attract consideration to human rights issues, together with a rally on Saturday outdoors what U.S. officers name an unlawful Chinese Communist Party “police station” in New York.

Gallagher despatched a letter to the Federal Bureau of Investigation final week in search of details about such alleged police outposts.

China denies working “police stations” on U.S. soil.

‘GREAT CHINESE FIREWALL’

Tuesday’s listening to had 4 witnesses, together with H.R. McMaster, a retired Army lieutenant normal who was former Republican President Donald Trump’s nationwide safety adviser, and Matt Pottinger, a long-time China hawk who was deputy nationwide safety adviser to Trump.

McMaster mentioned the United States should put a precedence on expediting the supply of billions of {dollars} of weapons and munitions that Taiwan has already bought. “As we might have learned from Ukraine’s experience, it is much cheaper to deter a war than to fight one,” he mentioned in his written testimony.

In a nod to rising U.S. issues about China’s affect on expertise, Pottinger mentioned the U.S. authorities ought to accomplice with American expertise corporations which are banned in China and discover a approach for folks in China to bypass the nation’s strict Internet censorship.

“I think you could punch holes in the great Chinese firewall,” Pottinger mentioned.

In his written testimony, Pottinger wrote that the committee should shield the rights of Chinese Americans by “standing up against bigotry and discrimination here at home.”

“Protect, also, Chinese nationals studying and working in the United States so they can enjoy the freedoms that so starkly distinguish the American way of life from the increasingly oppressive atmosphere in China today,” Pottinger mentioned.

Although the committee is bipartisan, some Democratic lawmakers have voiced issues that it might gasoline anti-Asian sentiment inside the United States. Krishnamoorthi referred to such issues, and the necessity for bipartisanship, in his remarks.

Also testifying had been Tong Yi, a dissident who was jailed in China for greater than two years, and Scott Paul, president of the Alliance for American Manufacturing.

Tong, a naturalized U.S. citizen, recounted her time in a Chinese labor camp after she was convicted of disturbing social order for her ties to democracy activists within the Nineties.

Paul known as for an finish to U.S. dependence on Chinese manufacturing.

A want for a tough line in dealings with Beijing is without doubt one of the few actually bipartisan sentiments within the deeply divided U.S. Congress, with each Republicans and President Joe Biden’s Democrats calling for elevated efforts to counteract China’s international affect.

U.S.-China tensions have been particularly excessive of late, over China’s more and more aggressive army posture towards Taiwan, speak that China could also be supporting Russia’s conflict towards Ukraine, and the U.S.’s taking pictures down on Feb. 4 a Chinese balloon suspected of spying over U.S. territory.

Beijing has denied that the balloon was a authorities spy vessel.

The choose committee has 13 Republican and 11 Democratic members. It is not going to write laws, however will draw consideration to competitors between the United States and China on a spread of fronts and make coverage suggestions.

Published On:

Mar 1, 2023