The House China task force warned about U.S. “strategic competition” with China in the “ideological domain” in a newly released report, issuing dozens of recommendations to confront China’s activities on the world stage.
“Nowhere is the U.S. strategic competition with the CCP starker than in the ideological domain. CCP leaders themselves believe the Party stands existentially threatened by ‘false ideological trends’ arising from constitutional democracy, universal values, civil society, free markets, independent journalism, dissidents, and even the Party’s own checkered history. This is a lesson that CCP General Secretary Xi [Jinping] has taken directly from the collapse of the USSR, which he attributes to its lack of ideological vigor,” the 141-page GOP report said.
“The good news is that this competition is playing out on grounds favorable to the U.S. Given the choice between Beijing’s totalitarian system, international bullying, and rampant corruption, American values provide an effective contrast with a track record that speaks for itself,” the report added. “Unlike the CCP, which has clients but no friends, the U.S. leads the world’s largest alliance system.”
Republicans said the task force was launched in May amid the coronavirus pandemic, which originated in Wuhan and which the United States has accused the Chinese government of helping cover up, to assess the growing threat posed by China and to come up with ways to counter its global activities. Democrats backed out, so the task force comprises 15 GOP members and is led by Rep. Michael McCaul of Texas, the GOP’s ranking member on the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
The report highlighted the challenge posed by China’s United Front, a network of strategic groups meant to boost the Chinese Communist Party’s influence worldwide. Republicans said that it “has taken on even greater importance within the CCP hierarchy” and pointed out that Xi singled it out as a “magic weapon” to promote the “great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.” Republicans said that the “magic weapon can take a variety of forms, but typically involves coopting elites in foreign governments as well as in international organizations in a way that subtly but steadily reshapes the international system away from western or universal values and towards a Sino-centric international order” and that “corruption is central to the CCP’s strategy to reorient the values of the international system in a way that makes the world safe for its authoritarianism.”
Republicans said there were more than 80 key findings and more than 400 “forward-leaning” recommendations in the report, including 178 legislative proposals, nearly two-thirds of which they said were bipartisan and one-third of which have passed either the House or Senate.
The report called for “coordinating a whole-of-government offensive information statecraft campaign to counter the CCP’s propaganda machine by using truth and our values to undermine CCP’s lies and malign ideology,” “ensuring our citizens are aware when they are watching or listening to CCP sponsored and censored media and entertainment content,” and “safeguarding the U.S. electoral process and the integrity of our elections,” including through “the identification of foreign malign actors” and by “ensuring any individuals who engage interference are inadmissible for entry to the U.S. or deportable if already present.”
Bill Evanina, who leads the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, released an intelligence assessment in early August warning that China “prefers” that President Trump not win reelection and is “expanding its influence efforts ahead of November 2020.” The counterintelligence official also said that Iran “seeks to undermine” Trump’s presidency. Evanina said that Russia is “using a range of measures to primarily denigrate” former Vice President Joe Biden, the Democratic presidential nominee.
House Republicans emphasized the importance of “countering the CCP’s global malign influence by requiring transparency and accountability within the United Nations system,” including at the World Health Organization, determining whether “the CCP’s crimes against Uyghurs” reach the level of a genocide, providing a safe harbor for Hong Kong refugees, pursuing a bilateral trade agreement with Taiwan, deterring “the CCP’s aggression in the Indo-Pacific” by modernizing the U.S. military, and “increasing focus” on how the U.S. protects its capabilities in space.
The report also called for “better securing” the U.S.’s medical and national security supply chains, “divestment” from companies with ties to China’s military, forcing Chinese companies to abide by U.S. financial disclosure standards to be listed on U.S. stock exchanges, taking a “whole-of-government approach” to assess and counter the security risks posed by China in the fifth generation wireless networks of the U.S. and its allies, and “highlighting the CCP’s rampant environmental destruction.”
The House GOP said other important goals included sanctioning Chinese telecommunications companies engaged in “economic or industrial espionage” and any Chinese company attempting to hack coronavirus vaccine research, “closing loopholes” China has allegedly exploited in the U.S. visa system, and “bolstering Mandarin language capacity” and other federal counterintelligence capabilities. It also called for requiring schools to report all Chinese foreign donations annually and for “restricting all federal employees and contractors from participating in foreign talent programs” to strengthen the protection of sensitive research.
