Bid to steer US from risky path
Groups appeal to lawmakers for more balanced approach on China issues
Dozens of US organizations have called on House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi to help promote a “more reasonable and balanced” approach to the United States’ competition with China.
In a joint letter, the 28 groups said the “dangerous” approach put forward in the proposed US Innovation and Competition Act should be rejected. The Senate passed the legislation a month ago.
On June 8, the upper chamber of the US Congress approved a sweeping package of legislation intended to ramp up the country’s ability to counter China’s tech development.
The $250 billion bill, which includes the Strategic Competition Act, needs to pass the House of Representatives before reaching the desk of US President Joe Biden.
“Even as the US responds to real issues of concern in Chinese behavior, it’s important for the US Congress to pass legislation on the basis of clear facts and understanding, not on ideological rhetoric and worst-case assumptions,” said Michael Swaine, director of the East Asia Program at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.
The Quincy Institute, a think tank in Washington, is among the organizations that wrote to Pelosi urging her to support efforts by House Democrats to advance a more balanced and reasonable national security approach to competition with China than was passed by the Senate in the bill.
The letter, released by the institute last week, called on the House to fully consider the legislation and reject the more “extreme” aspects of the Senate bill.
Quincy Institute Advocacy Director Marcus Stanley told China Daily on Wednesday that his organization expects “this letter will influence the congressional debate on legislation concerning the US response to China”.
Swaine said that at this critical juncture in US-China relations, Congress needs to promote realistic, pragmatic approaches to China that can both protect US interests while advancing necessary cooperation and avoiding destructive cycles of escalation, according to a statement by the institute.
In the Senate legislation package, the letter authors singled out Division C, which is titled the Strategic Competition Act.
On the day the Senate passed the bill, Swaine tweeted: “I hope the US public gets a clearer view on exactly how destructive many (not all) aspects of the SCA really are. It is good to build US domestic strengths, but not on the basis of such a distorted view of (China and) its threat (to) the US.”
The Senate legislation designated China the “greatest geopolitical and geoeconomic challenge” to US foreign policy, and lawmakers also included a host of provisions that take more explicit aim at China in a move that risks ratcheting up bilateral tensions in the years after Donald Trump openly sparred with Beijing during his presidency, The Washington Post reported.
Addressing concerns
By provoking “excessive escalation and conflict”, many provisions would make it harder, not easier, to address US concerns with China and to address issues of mutual concern ranging from climate change to nuclear proliferation, the joint letter said.
Rahna Epting, executive director of MoveOn, a public policy advocacy group, said it’s unfortunate that the US Senate can only find rare bipartisanship through “inflammatory, adversarial, and counterproductive” legislation toward China.
Epting called on Pelosi to facilitate a dynamic dialogue that would allow “more reasonable” proposals to shape the final legislation.
Erik Sperling, executive director of the pro-diplomacy group Just Foreign Policy, another institute that signed the letter, said the legislation that Congress ultimately sends to the president “has the potential to enshrine a new Cold War” against the country with the largest population in the world.
“There should be a deliberate process that permits the American people and their representatives to study and weigh in on these crucial issues through an open process on the floor of the House,” Sperling said in a media statement.