What a House Select Committee can do about China

OPINION:

The Center for Strategic and International Studies recently made public the results of war games that sought to predict what would happen if communist China invaded Taiwan. The good news is that Taiwan — aided by the United States and other allies, including Japan — won. Taiwan survived and remained independent.

The bad news is that casualties and destroyed weaponry on both sides were extensive. The CSIS team was direct: “The United States and its allies lost dozens of ships, hundreds of aircraft and tens of thousands of service members. Taiwan saw its economy devastated. Further, the high losses damaged the U.S. global position for many years.”

Leaving aside the questions about some of the more optimistic assumptions of the war gamers, the outcome of the simulation — and similar outcomes from other such exercises — brings into stark relief the more pressing elements of the challenge posed by China.

The next day, the new Republican majority in the House established the Select Committee on Strategic Competition between the United States and China, and placed Rep. Mike Gallagher, Wisconsin Republican, in charge.

There are two concerns with the committee as structured. First, select committees in Congress are usually where issues go to die. By their very nature, select committees operate outside the usual institutional pathways and are (like this one) unable to legislate. The committees on whose jurisdiction they impinge (in this case, just about every committee in the House) typically and understandably resent their presence.

Second, the mission and the scope of the select committee needs to be sharp. Communist China is not a competitor; it is an adversary. Clarity on this point is essential.

It is also essential to understand the extent and depth of the struggle. The temptation among some is to place the template of our struggle against the Soviet Union atop any national competition. That tends to reduce our conflict with communist China to armed forces and weaponry.

That’s wrong. The communists in China present a much more complicated and difficult challenge than the Soviets. Communist China has infiltrated the American economy, American society and American institutions (like businesses and universities) in ways that the Soviet communists could not have imagined.

Consequently, our response to this particular group of rapacious communists needs to be sustained across a range of activities.

For example, we know that China is using our fascination with the relatively modest problem posed by climate change against us. At the moment, the United States is the world’s largest producer of oil and natural gas. To disrupt that, China is using international institutions and processes centered on addressing climate change to diminish the value of that advantage and increase its advantages in the critical minerals that will be essential if the world ever does transition to solar and wind power and electric vehicles.

We know that China has conducted espionage in places such as companies, universities and research hospitals that are essential to our competitive advantage in medicine and technology.

We know that TikTok is a cancer on our society and is, without a doubt, the most effective psychological warfare ever conducted on the American public. It needs to be banned.

We know that Chinese interests have given millions of dollars to organizations such as the University of Pennsylvania’s Biden Center, presumably to curry favor with one of America’s ruling families and its retinue.

We know that internally, communist China engages in genocide and slavery in more places than Xinjiang and against more people than just the Uyghurs. We know it suppresses freedom of religion and conscience; we know that Jimmy Lai remains in jail for the crimes of being Catholic and being a partisan for Hong Kong.

There is evidence to suggest that COVID-19 was intentionally developed in a laboratory in China. Perhaps it was intentionally released.

We know that China uses its access to our capital markets to wage its cold war against us. That needs to stop.

Fortunately, there is some national cohesion on the pressing need to act on all of this; 146 House Democrats voted along with all of the Republicans to establish the select committee.

Mr. Gallagher understands the magnitude of the problem. He said “the select committee will expose the [Chinese Communist Party’s] coordinated whole-of-society strategy to undermine American leadership and American sovereignty while working on a bipartisan basis … to identify long-overdue, commonsense approaches to counter CCP aggression.”

Let’s hope he and his colleagues are successful.

• Michael McKenna, a columnist for The Washington Times, co-hosts “The Unregulated Podcast.” He was most recently a deputy assistant to the president and deputy director of the Office of Legislative Affairs at the White House.