US House panel targeting Chinese influence makes its mark, to mixed reviews
- The committee, which has floated ideas that would alter global economics if enacted, uses a high-decibel loudspeaker but in reality has limited power
- Panel’s chairman says the work confronts ‘an existential struggle over what life will look like in the 21st century’, but an old China hand calls him demagogue
It’s a year old, still finding its feet and making a lot of noise.
As the US House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party approaches its anniversary on January 10, reviews are decidedly mixed. Some have condemned the panel, questioning its accomplishments and ability to follow through, while others have offered grudging respect or full-throated praise.
One thing is certain. The committee is making its mark and, given dismal relations between the United States and the People’s Republic of China, is likely to be an enduring Washington fixture in some form.
Led by Representative Mike Gallagher, 39, a Republican China hawk from Wisconsin, the committee has been bold, singular and confrontational on issues related to its avowed adversary.
“The CCP is laser focused on its vision for the future,” Gallagher said at the committee’s first hearing in February. “We may call this a strategic competition. But it’s 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.”
Gallagher, a former Marine Corps intelligence officer who served two tours in Iraq, has rebutted critics who accuse him of fanning tensions.
“Some, who fail to learn from decades of CCP behaviour, have been wringing their hands wondering if we’re being too provocative,” Gallagher said, referencing a quote by former president Ronald Reagan comparing totalitarianism to a crocodile. “We’re merely feeding the crocodile that will eventually eat us. We must not be intimidated.”
Critics say the committee, led by Gallagher and Representative Raja Krishnamoorthi, 50, an Asian-American from Illinois and the committee’s lead Democrat, irresponsibly stokes fears of a US-China war, has a simplistic, zero-sum view and fuels anti-Asian hate. Supporters, including Republican hardliners, counter that it is waking the US up to dangers that threaten to undermine America’s global position.
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“We commend Chairman Gallagher and ranking member Krishnamoorthi for continuing their bipartisan work to highlight the threat that the CCP poses to US economic and national security,” said Michael Stumo, chief executive of the Coalition for a Prosperous America, a group that lobbies on behalf of domestic producers.
Others, including those who helped forge early ties, say the committee epitomises a Washington where blaming China is often reflexive.
“Mike Gallagher is a demagogue, single-issue guy trying to ride China to notoriety,” said Chas Freeman, a retired diplomat who served as translator during president Richard Nixon’s 1972 trip to Beijing. “We have a lot of problems and domestically none of these really involve China except that they’re focused on China as a scapegoat. And China’s a great scapegoat, basically pretty incompetent at explaining itself.”
Among the panel’s long list of priorities are sending more weapons to Taiwan; showcasing Chinese human rights abuses; fighting economic coercion; and calling out the likes of Sequoia Capital, Apple and Disney for their dependence on China, failure to defend US values and potential forced labour use in supply chains.
While Gallagher stops short of advocating a full decoupling of two-way trade, which exceeded US$750 billion in 2022, many of his ideas would significantly alter global economics if enacted.
“It seems to me that the committee isn’t actually pushing the policy forward,” said Richard Boucher, a fellow at Brown University’s Watson Institute and a former US consul general in Hong Kong. “They’re merely reflecting the growing US consensus that China’s rise is a domestic and international challenge to US leadership.”
“We have no quarrel with the Chinese people or people of Chinese origin. That’s why we should never engage in anti-Chinese or anti-Asian stereotyping or prejudice,” said Krishnamoorthi. “We do not want a war with the PRC – not a cold war, not a hot war. We don’t want a clash of civilisations. But we seek a durable peace, and that is why we have to deter aggression.”
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Gallagher, tapped to head the committee after the 2022 midterm elections, has a Princeton undergraduate degree, double master’s degrees in intelligence and security studies and a Georgetown PhD in Cold War history. While his career mostly focused on the Middle East, he was heavily influenced in Iraq by Matt Pottinger, who was a deputy national security adviser and China-policy architect during Donald Trump’s administration.
The committee has excelled in using communication tools and strategies, even by the standard of Washington’s media circus – issuing a torrent of press releases, jumping on China-related developments and using backdrops and eye-catching issues to spread its message beyond the capital.
Hearings in New York and Silicon Valley sought to pressure companies and financial institutions into shunning “profits over national security”; in Iowa, it highlighted Chinese theft of agricultural intellectual property; in Wisconsin, it showcased dumping allegations; and a closed overseas Chinese police outpost was used to warn of complacency.
“If you are sympathetic to them, you could justifiably say this is raising China issues for the American public,” said Jeffrey Moon, head of China Moon Strategies and a former National Security Council official. “If you are not sympathetic … you could interpret this as a platform for Gallagher personally.”
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The committee’s high-decibel loudspeaker contrasts with its limited power. As a select committee, it cannot introduce legislation, which gives it rein to think big but also means its recommendations are not always realistic politically.
Its call to revoke China’s permanent normal trade relations status – a system of global trade practices – and restrict outbound investment to China were non-starters amid strong US corporate opposition.
Despite introducing 724 bills, the Republican-led House passed just 27 into law this year, the fewest since the 1980s.
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Other committees also jealously guard their turf.
“The current US House is struggling to just do the basics like pass appropriations bills and keep the American government functioning,” said Kevin Nealer, a partner at the Scowcroft Group, a Washington advisory firm, and a former Senate trade policy adviser. “And the committees with legislative responsibility for aspects of US-China relations, like Ways and Means, won’t cede their jurisdiction to a non-legislative group of members.”
Other paths to influence include adding riders or amendments that piggyback on successful legislation. But here too, its bid to include outbound investment language in the annual defence bill fell short.
“It allows the committee more intrusive scrutiny of businesses’ ties to China than other existing China-related agencies,” said Dominic Chiu, senior analyst with the Eurasia Group. “Many US businesses have privately expressed discomfort about the reputational risks of being spotlighted in a report or summoned.”
Companies are not the only ones wary of its gaze. “The administration has also been very careful about its China policy not to be on their radar,” concerned it will be deemed too accommodating of Beijing, said Yun Sun, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Stimson Centre, adding that the committee is something of a self-appointed watchdog.
“They’re watching players or entities that have anything to do with China,” she said. “On the other hand, they’re a congressional committee, and oversight or congressional supervision is the role of the Congress … They’re doing what they’re supposed to do.”
Another distinguishing feature is the bipartisanship among its 24 members in an era of deep polarisation. There is little evidence of division, a tone set by Gallagher and Krishnamoorthi, who work well together.
“It’s a bipartisan effort in an era of extreme partisanship, so that alone is something,” said Raymond Kuo, director of the Rand Corporation’s Taiwan Policy Initiative. “It’s a concrete sign how much the legislative branch takes China seriously.”
It also underscores the hardline consensus towards China.
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“It’s the one bipartisan issue these days in Congress other than a pay raise,” said a Republican lobbyist in Washington. “But the China issue you can talk about in public. The pay raise you can’t.”
The committee, formed with a two-year mandate after Republicans won a House majority in 2022, initially struggled to gain traction. One applicant for a staff job reported not being asked about knowledge of China or related qualifications, according to a source, only whether the jobseeker was tough on Beijing. “That says a lot about the committee,” the source said. “It’s very political. Of course it’s political – but it’s especially political.”
Predictably, Beijing has little love for Gallagher or his colleagues.
“The committee you mentioned is obsessed with attacking and smearing China. It is biased and hostile and has no rationality to speak of,” said foreign ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning. “What they have said fully shows that some in the US are attempting to politicise and weaponise trade and tech issues between China and the US. We firmly oppose this.”
While the administration of President Joe Biden came into office pledging a detailed China policy review, critics say this never materialised, while its Indo-Pacific and China strategies were short on specifics.
“They’ve created a checklist, listed thematically in a useful and logical way,” said Moon. “Gallagher, what he’s done, he’s gotten into the details that the China review should have gotten into, and did it in a bipartisan way. That’s the most significant thing they did.”
A source close to the committee countered that it has methodically hired China experts, spent considerable time understanding the Chinese system, has worked with standing committees to further legislation and has looked in some detail at investing in and reinvigorating the American economy to compete economically with China.
“They’ve probably used effectively the limited tools they have,” said Bonnie Glaser, managing director of the German Marshall Fund of the United States. “Gallagher himself has become quite a figure, a voice of criticism about China that certainly is having influence in some places and among some people. But I still find generally everything in that committee is instinctively anti-China.”
