Gallagher panel to take hard look at China
Congressman warns it’s a right-here-at-home issue
WASHINGTON – Wisconsin U.S. Rep. Mike Gallagher on Tuesday will lay out the roadmap for his newly formed committee on China, attempting during the panel’s first hearing to make the case to the public that China’s communist government is a threat both internationally and domestically.
“This isn’t a matter of some obscure territorial claim in the East China Sea.
It’s a question of American sovereignty,” Gallagher told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on Monday. “It’s a right-here-athome problem.”
The House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party’s first hearing – scheduled in primetime at 6 p.m. – will have a broad scope. The committee plans to touch on everything from the military threat China poses to Taiwan to the impact of the U.S.’s economic ties to China to reported human rights abuses by the Chinese government and Chinese activity in the U.S.
The hearing comes at a time of increasing tension between Washington and Beijing and just weeks after the Biden Administration shot down a suspected Chinese surveillance balloon that flew over the continental U.S.
It marks the first presentation from Gallagher and the committee since its creation in January and could provide a glimpse into progress on a major goal for the panel: maintaining bipartisanship.
What is the goal of the hearing?
For Gallagher, this first hearing is an opportunity to make the case to colleagues and the public that the Chinese Communist Party “is a threat that your average American should care about.”
The Green Bay Republican told the Journal Sentinel he plans to make clear what he calls the stakes of the competition between China and the U.S. – a discussion he framed as a decision between living in a free world or a “technototalitarian world in which a small group of people control all of our decisions and use technology to enforce their will.”
In addition to covering the Chinese government’s military and ideological threats and close economic ties, Gallagher indicated the committee would
probe the U.S.’s past policies on China.
Hearing to highlight Taiwan, following Gallagher’s covert trip
The prime-time hearing is likely to include aspects of recent trips from Gallagher aimed at highlighting various challenges the Chinese government poses.
Gallagher returned early last week from a covert trip to Taiwan in which he met with top Taipei officials about China’s threat to the island. He called to end the nearly $20 billion backlog of weapons and military equipment the U.S. approved for Taiwan and warned of socalled “cognitive warfare” consisting largely of disinformation campaigns and cyber attacks from China.
Over the weekend, Gallagher and two other committee members, New York Democratic U.S. Rep. Ritchie Torres and Florida Republican U.S. Rep. Neal Dunn, held a rally outside an unauthorized Chinese “police station” in New York’s Chinatown to draw attention to China’s efforts to control its citizens abroad.
Humanitarian groups have identified more than 100 such unauthorized Chinese law enforcement posts worldwide. The outposts have been linked to efforts by the Chinese Communist Party to surveil and harass Chinese dissidents outside of China. The FBI last fall raided the New York location, according to the New York Times.
“We’re sending a powerful message that the defense of human rights from the abuses of the CCP is not a Democratic value or a Republican value. It’s an American value,” Torres said in New York on Saturday. “How can we, the United States of America, claim to be a defender of freedom if we fail to defend freedom fighters within our own borders here on U.S. soil.”
Gallagher on Monday called the Saturday rally in New York the “rollout” of the committee’s plans to highlight China’s domestic influence.
The committee is expected to incorporate video into the hearing in an effort to make it “more interesting than your average congressional hearing.”
Who are the witnesses?
Tuesday’s hearing will feature four high-profile witnesses who are largely respected across the political spectrum.
The list includes former President Donald Trump’s national security adviser, H.R. McMaster, and former Deputy National Security Adviser Matthew Pottinger, as well as Tong Yi, a Chinese human rights activist, and Scott Paul, president of the Alliance for American Manufacturing.
Each witness, Gallagher said, was selected to testify on the “different dimensions” of the threat to China. McMaster, a retired U.S. Army lieutenant general, will likely speak to China’s military threat, while Pottinger, a leading China expert, can “get at the ideological and informational aspects” of China’s influence, according to Gallagher.
Tong is the former secretary to leading China dissident Wei Jingsheng and a longtime human rights activist. Tong and Wei were arrested during pro-democracy protests in the mid-1990s. Tong is expected to tell the panel about her experience with the Chinese Communist Party.
Wei will not testify at the hearing, Gallagher said, but the committee plans to recognize Chinese activists and dissidents in the audience Tuesday night.
Paul, called as a witness by Democrats, is expected to speak on China’s economic and manufacturing impact on the U.S. and domestic workers.
What’s next for the committee?
The main topics covered in Tuesday’s primetime panel are likely to become the focus of future hearings.
The committee could, for example, hold a hearing on the Chinese government’s potential invasion of Taiwan and why Taiwan matters on the international stage. Another hearing could focus on the threat of China to American businesses, Gallagher suggested, and yet another could touch on Chinese land purchases in the U.S.
“After this overall level-setting, scene-setting hearing, we’re then going to drill into specific aspects of the threat,” Gallagher told the Journal Sentinel. “And then after that we’ll transition to hearings focused on what do we do about it. What can we do in the short term and the long term to counter CCP aggression?”
What else will committee study?
Other issues like American corporations with business ties to China and China’s handling of questions related to the origin of coronavirus could also come under committee scrutiny.
The Energy Department concluded with “low confidence” that the COVID-19 pandemic most likely began after an unintentional laboratory leak in China, according to recent news reports. The intelligence community remains divided over the origin of the COVID pandemic, with some maintaining COVID emerged through natural transmission. A definitive origin is unclear.
In response to the news, Gallagher on Monday indicated his panel could look into biosecurity and what the Chinese Communist Party’s “cover up of the pandemic” tells the U.S. about the Chinese government.
He also pushed back on scientists who previously dismissed the lab leak theory, saying they were trying to “shut down debate and dissent and not allowing for a fair test of competing hypotheses.”
“We need to learn the lessons of where this pandemic came from and our many failures in responding in order to prevent a future pandemic,” he said.
He called on the Biden Administration to declassify intelligence surrounding the origin of the virus.
“We must also take concrete steps to hold the Chinese Communist Party accountable for their lack of transparency surrounding COVID-19 by passing my bill to impose sanctions and other restrictions on CCP-affiliated scientists until the Party allows a transparent, international investigation into the Wuhan Institute of Virology,” he said in a news release.
Where can I watch the hearing?
Tuesday’s hearing will be livestreamed on the China committee’s website.
“We’re sending a powerful message that the defense of human rights from the abuses of the CCP is not a Democratic value or a Republican value. It’s an American value.” U.S. Rep. Ritchie Torres, D-NY