House committee vows to stop China’s ‘tech-powered dystopia’, threat to turn Americans against each other
WASHINGTON – The chairman of a special House committee dedicated to countering Chinese threats to the US warned Tuesday night that Beijing has sought to pit Americans “against each other to undermine our country” — and he vowed to stop “CCP’s tech-powered dystopia.”
“Just because this Congress is divided, we cannot afford to waste the next two years lingering in legislative limbo or pandering for the press,” Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.) said in his opening remarks. “We must act with a sense of urgency.”
The prime-time debut of the panel, officially known as the Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party, came as threats to national security from the Asian power dominate headlines.
On Feb. 4, the US shot down a Chinese spy balloon off the coast of South Carolina after it traveled across the continental US for the preceding week, hovering over sensitive military installations along the way.
Meanwhile, a Sunday report revealed the Department of Energy now believes COVID-19 leaked from a Chinese lab.
Beijing also continues to be the focus of suspicion over its threats to invade Taiwan and its claims over the South China Sea, as well as its role in smuggling deadly fentanyl into the US amid an opioid crisis.
In his opening statement, Gallagher, a former Marine who served in Iraq, cited a 1991 book by Chinese academic and Communist Party leader Wang Huning.
“[Wang] wrote a book called ‘America Against America’ — a critique of the internal conflict he found at the heart of American society,” he said. “‘America Against America’ also describes the strategy that Wang, [Chinese President] Xi Jinping and the CCP have pursued in the years since — pitting Americans, who they believe are greedy and factional, against each other to undermine our country.”
The House of Representatives voted to establish the committee last month with rare, overwhelmingly bipartisan support.
Gallagher has structured the panel with 13 Republicans and 11 Democrats, making it one of the most politically balanced committees in the GOP-controlled House.
Gallagher has said he wants to continue the work of Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), the current House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman whose 2020 China Task Force report solicited input from more than 130 experts — but was produced without the help of any Democrats.
“We must build upon [the task force’s work] as we investigate and expose the ideological, technological, economic and military threat posed by the Chinese Communist Party,” he said.
The three-hour-long hearing was interrupted by two back-to-back protesters holding signs reading, “China is not the Enemy” and “Stop Asian Hate,” the latter of which echoed messages sent in January by a handful of Democratic lawmakers who had opposed the committee’s creation.
“This committee is about saber-rattling; it’s not about peace,” one protester shouted before Capitol Police escorted him out of the hearing. “We need cooperation. Warmongering is the greatest threat to this country.”
The outbursts interrupted testimony by former Trump administration National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster, who suggested that “these eruptions are indicative of really the effect that the United Front Work Department” has had on the American public, referencing the CCP overseas agency that works to “co-opt and neutralize sources of potential opposition” to China’s ruling party around the world, according to the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission.
“They have reinforced to some degree what you might call a bit of a curriculum of self-loathing that has taken hold in academia for many years,” McMaster said of the UFWD’s influence in the US. “They reinforced, I think, the idea that America is the problem in the world, and only if America disengages — or in this case, becomes more passive — then things will get better.”
“The reality is that this committee’s work is really important because we have to catch up, mainly because of the complacency that you hear reflected — maybe in an extreme way — in these two outbursts,” he added.
Capitol Police placed the protesters in handcuffs once outside the hearing, but it was unclear whether they had been formally arrested.
Gallagher said he did not intend to press charges against the two after Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) questioned their detainment in his remarks at the hearing.
“When we listen to dissent, when we listen to people who question the very existence of the committee, we show by example exactly what makes the United States of America different than the Communist Chinese Party,” Khanna said. “Mr. Chairman, I think you did the right thing by asking them to leave … but I was told they’re in handcuffs outside; I hope they’re not going to be arrested simply for speaking their mind.”
Scott Paul, president of the Alliance for American Manufacturers trade union, pointed out the irony of the outburst in his testimony, noting the protesters would “have no such right in China.”
“I think it’s worth saying that those protesters have a right to an unlimited amount of free speech in the United States and to petition their government for the redress of grievances,” he said. “In China … their voices would be silenced, perhaps permanently.”
Paul also spoke to the importance of convincing US companies to rely less on Chinese manufacturers, urging the committee to continue holding hearings to warn Americans of the grim reality that “no business [in China] is untainted” by the CCP and the US is “too dependent on China for many essential goods.”
“Bringing China into the world trade system in 2000 seemed like a slam dunk, but instead became a spectacular failure of conventional wisdom and elite opinion,” he said. “American workers suffered as a consequence: the trade deficit surged, 3.7 million jobs vanished, wages plunged [and] communities were wrecked.”
Though the protesters called for US-China “cooperation,” several witnesses, including former Deputy National Security Advisor Matthew Pottinger said that hope is naive, especially as diplomatic and military-to-military communications become increasingly frayed.
Secretary of State Anthony Blinken canceled his scheduled visit to Beijing earlier this month over the spy balloon incursion.
A week later, Chinese Defense Minister Gen. Wei Fenghe ignored Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s call after the balloon shootdown.
The two last spoke on Nov. 22 while attending a meeting of defense ministers in Cambodia, the Pentagon said Tuesday.
“Look, we want to keep channels open with Beijing, particularly high-level channels,” he said. “But we shouldn’t kid ourselves, our corporations, well-meaning protesters, whoever it is … that Beijing has any interest in collaborating with the United States or others in trying to prevent and mitigate serious problems in the world.”
While improved communications could “prevent Xi Jinping from making a grave miscalculation” drawing the US into war, Pottinger said Washington cannot count on Beijing to help ease tensions or cooperate on worldwide problems.
“Whether it’s drug abuse, whether it’s the creation of weapons, pollution of our oceans, our atmosphere is getting hotter or pandemics – usually when you actually wait and take the time to study the causes of these problems, the CCP is usually one of the primary contributors to those problems,” he said. “It is very rarely in any kind of an honest way trying to mitigate against those problems.”
Gallagher was careful throughout the hearing to distinguish the CCP as the enemy – and not the Chinese people, who he said “have always been the Party’s primary victims.”
To drive home that point, the panel played a video at the top of the hearing that Gallagher said depicted “some of the suffering the Chinese Communist Party has inflicted since it came to power over 70 years ago.”
“The CCP is laser-focused on its vision for the future — a world crowded with techno-totalitarian surveillance states where human rights are subordinate to the whims of the party,” Gallagher said. “This is an existential struggle over what life will look like in the 21st century — and the most fundamental freedoms are at stake.”
To make the risks clear, human rights advocate Tong Yi, who spent 2.5 years in a Chinese work camp for serving as an interpreter for a leading CCP dissenter in the 1990s, testified at the hearing to Beijing’s brutality.
“Three decades ago, in 1989, I myself was a student protester. I witnessed the killings of the innocent people by the [Chinese military] … on those fateful nights of June 3 and 4 [in Tiananmen Square,]” she said. “Many others more experienced and articulate could be sitting here before you but cannot raise harm to themselves or their families, especially those with relatives in China.”
Gallagher said Tong’s words served as a “cautionary tale” that should inspire the committee to make meaningful steps to deter China and avoid conflict.
“Our policy over the next 10 years will set the stage for the next hundred,” he said. “We cannot allow the CCP’s tech-powered dystopia to prevail.”
Closing the hearing at 10 p.m., Gallagher said he hoped the committee would continue illuminating the CCP’s threat to the US in future meetings for the good of not just the country – but of the world.
“Three hours is roughly the length of a long movie — like an ‘Avatar’-length movie. And like any cinematic experience in examining this strategic competition with the CCP tonight, we’ve gotten a sense of heroes and villains,” he said. “And though we might differ slightly on precisely who the good guys and the bad guys are at times, there’s no question in my mind that we are the good guys.”
“We are the good guys that even on our worst day, the rest of the world is still looking to us for leadership,” he added.
