Last week in Washington, a group of international parliamentarians from 30 countries met to discuss what to do about the increasing global threat of the People’s Republic of China. This legislative summit introduced to the United States the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, founded in 2020, a potentially important forum to coordinate policy responses to Beijing.

Iain Duncan Smith, former leader of the United Kingdom’s Conservative Party and a driving force behind IPAC, has long warned of China’s dangerously expanding influence and sought to rouse a global audience to the risks. Duncan Smith has significant experience in China-related matters, and, for his good work, Beijing has sanctioned him, along with several other House of Commons members. Such interference in sovereign legislative deliberations (what our Constitution protects for Congress under the “speech or debate” clause) awakened British politicians across party lines who, like many in America and across the West, were slow to see China’s rising threat.