Focusing on serious foreign challenges

For far too long, American leaders have accepted the erosion of our advantage over the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) both economically and militarily. In the meantime, the CCP has posed increasingly as an adversary rather than a friend to the United States and the entire world.

It is time to analyze the policies that have allowed the CCP to dominate on the global stage and find solutions that ensure America’s success in this competition.

From its aggression in the western Pacific, to the coverup of the origins of the coronavirus, to its threat to global supply chains and blatant theft of American intellectual property, Republicans in the House of Representatives understand the CCP is a serious generational threat that must be confronted before it is too late. Because of this threat, I am pleased that one of the House of Representatives’ first actions in the new Congress was to establish the Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party.

This bipartisan committee will rightly investigate the CCP’s competition with the United States and our allies. Composed of 16 members appointed by the Speaker of the House in concert with the Minority Leader, the committee will include nine Republicans and seven Democrats. It will hold public hearings in connection with its investigative functions and may make policy recommendations on the status of the CCP’s economic, technological and security progress.

Members of the select committee will address the CCP’s wrongdoings which include its deceptive trade practices, threats to the global supply chain and its role as a supplier and producer of fentanyl.
The committee will also conduct oversight into China’s exploitation of U.S. investment to power the CCP national security state, acquisition of agricultural land in America and its pursuit of advanced technologies at the expense of U.S. intellectual property.

The CCP is an adversary and cannot be trusted as a global partner. It is time American leaders start acting in accordance. In today’s dangerous world, addressing this strategic competition has never been more critical.

The establishment of a select committee to evaluate America’s relationship with the CCP and investigate this adversary’s misdeeds is long overdue.