New House Select Committee seeks 'Cold War' victory over China

What's next in U.S.-China relations.

Jan 05, 2023 View in browser   By Phelim Kine Rep. Mike Gallagher testifies during a Republican-led forum on the origins of the COVID-19 virus at the U.S. Capitol on June 29, 2021, in Washington, D.C. | Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images Hi, China Watchers. We mark the first week of the New Year with a sneak peek at Rep. Mike Gallagher's (R-Wis.) plans as chair of the new House Select Committee on China. We'll also parse the implications of Chinese ambassador to the U.S. Qin Gang's promotion to foreign minister and decode his editorial swansong. And we profile a book that predicts that internal dissent to Chinese paramount leader Xi Jinping's rule is pushing the ruling Chinese Communist Party toward collapse, and soon. Let's get to it. — Phelim China is front-and-center of the GOP-led congressional agenda this year. Multiple House committees have Beijing in their crosshairs — in areas ranging from space exploration and supply chains to HUNTER BIDEN's laptop. And the new House Select Committee on China will tackle U.S.-China relations full-time. The committee is the brainchild of Rep. KEVIN McCARTHY (R-Calif.) who touted it as essential to "expose and fight against the Chinese Communist Party's cyber, trade and military threats against America," in a tweet last month. Rep. MIKE GALLAGHER (R-Wis.), chair of that committee, talked to China Watcher recently to discuss what he hopes to achieve over the next two years. Gallagher brings to the position seven years of experience as a former intelligence officer in the U.S. Marine Corps that included two deployments to Iraq. He also serves on the House Armed Services Committee and the House Intelligence Committee. Responses have been edited for length and clarity. Why do we need a House Select Committee dedicated exclusively to China issues? Because different committees have a piece of the puzzle, it's important that there's one committee ensuring that the puzzle is put together and that it's put together in a bipartisan fashion. That doesn't mean we're all going to hold hands and sing Kumbaya on every single issue, but if you look at our [House Foreign Affairs Committee] China Task Force report, nearly 70 percent of our recommendations were bipartisan bills. I think we have an opportunity to elevate the debate on China, inject it with a sense of urgency and ensure to the extent possible that our foreign policy is built on a bipartisan foundation. What will be the Select Committee's top priorities? We're going to be looking big picture. What are the immediate things we need to do in order to prevent World War III from breaking out over Taiwan? And then what are the long-term investments we need to make to win this new Cold War with Communist China. How is this a new Cold War? I believe China and Russia have been waging a new Cold War against us for the better part of a decade. And now we're waking up to the fact that that's happening. I recognize that this is not perfectly analogous to the old Cold War, but I find that comparison useful … [because] it's a whole of society effort. The health of our educational system is tied to our success, as is the number of harpoon missiles that we have on Taiwan. It's a long-term competition, not just a short-term sprint. Ultimately, it's an ideological competition between two competing systems of government and the values inherent in them. And it reminds us that our goal should be that it remains cold and not turn hot because that would be devastating. What are your benchmarks for the committee's success? That it actually lasts into the next Congress, regardless of who controls that Congress. I can confidently predict that the Chinese Communist Party is going to be our biggest national security problem for at least the next decade, if not the next three. So I think having a Select Committee that plays a coordinating and an oversight function in Congress where we're having that long-term look at what our country needs to do — that's going to endure beyond the next Congress. But a lot of that will depend on how good of a job we do. We want to make hearings interesting again and make them more interactive … to communicate with the American people as to why this matters, why the Chinese Communist Party presents a threat to our country and what we need to do to win. How effective can the committee be in this divided Congress? I'm compiling a list of legislation right now that I think could pass even a divided government. I'm not yet ready to release that in part because I also want to get feedback from the committee members, Democrats and Republicans. In a divided government you're not hitting legislative grand slams, but there are singles and doubles that we think we could get done. And then we can get the buy-in from the Biden administration. I still think I can convince most Democrats that I'm right on TikTok and that we should ban Tiktok. There were brutal, meaningful differences and disagreements between the parties and within the parties in the first decade of the old Cold War. But by and large, we were able to build out a foundation for containment that served us well over the course of the next four decades. Is the People's Republic of China an enemy of the United States? We have to make a distinction between the Chinese Communist Party and China and the Chinese people. The Chinese Communist Party is the enemy of freedom around the world. Their Orwellian model on steroids of totalitarian control presents a threat not only to the million Uighur Muslims that they have enslaved in Xinjiang province, not only to Chinese citizens who right now are protesting that model, but increasingly the model they want to export around the world. So we need to be realistic about that and understand the regime that we're dealing with and move forward to a day when perhaps we're dealing with a different set of behaviors from the Chinese Communist Party. IN CASE YOU MISSED IT… Check out POLITICO's '6 things to know' video explainer on the key challenges to China-U.S. relations in 2023 — you can view it here. Biden dissed China's ambassador in D.C. Now he's foreign minister The Biden administration shut out outgoing Chinese ambassador Qin Gang for much of his more than 500-day tenure in Washington, D.C. But that all changed last week when Chinese leader Xi Jinping appointed Qin as the country's new foreign minister, creating a headache for the administration at a time of high tension between Washington and Beijing. The problems will be front and center in the coming weeks when Secretary of State ANTONY BLINKEN visits China as the countries clash over trade, Chinese military intimidation of Taiwan and access to technology. Read my full story here. Tire-kicking the Pentagon's "transformative" 2023 The U.S. has pledged to deploy so much firepower to the Indo-Pacific in 2023 that China won't even consider invading Taiwan. Lawmakers and allies say it's already too late. The promise is a big one: "2023 is likely to stand as the most transformative year in U.S. force posture in the region in a generation," ELY RATNER, assistant secretary of defense for Indo-Pacific security affairs, said in early December. But GOP lawmakers say the Pentagon faces a stiff challenge in delivering on that pledge. Read my and POLITICO's LARA SELIGMAN's full story here China Covid surge prompts U.S. testing requirement The Biden administration announced new testing requirements last week for travelers coming to the U.S. from China — a response to soaring Covid infections in China and a sign of increased worry about the potential emergence of new variants. Read my and POLITICO's DAVID LIM's full story here. TRANSLATING WASHINGTON —USTR TAIWAN-BOUND FOR TRADE TALKS: U.S. trade officials will travel to Taiwan next week for the first formal round of talks on a proposed trade agreement that is moving forward despite objections from Beijing, POLITICO's DOUG PALMER reported on Wednesday. The U.S. delegation will be led by Assistant U.S. Trade Representative TERRY McCARTIN and will include representatives from several other U.S. government agencies. The U.S. and Taiwan agreed last year to launch talks on a U.S.-Taiwan Initiative on 21st-Century Trade and held two days of preliminary "conceptual discussions" in New York in November.  —NASA CHIEF: CHINA SEEKING LUNAR FOOTHOLD: The U.S.-China race to the moon is getting tighter and the next two years could determine who gains the upper hand, POLITICO's BRYAN BENDER reported on Sunday. So says NASA Administrator BILL NELSON, who warns that Beijing could establish a foothold and try to dominate the most resource-rich locations on the lunar surface — or even keep the U.S. out.  —STATE APPROVES $180M TAIWAN ARMS SALE: The State Department approved the sale of a $180 million Volcano anti-tank weapons system for Taiwan last week. The weaponry will help the self-governing island "to maintain a credible defensive capability," the Defense Security Cooperation Agency said in a statement. The sale raises the risk that the U.S. "will draw fire against itself and bear all the consequences" said senior colonel TAN KEFEI, spokesperson for China's Ministry of National Defense, in a statement released on Friday. —PENTAGON SLAMS CHINESE JET'S 'UNSAFE MANEUVER': A Chinese fighter jet almost collided with a U.S. Navy jet on patrol over international waters in the South China Sea last month, the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command reported. The Chinese pilot "flew an unsafe maneuver by flying in front of and within 20 feet" of the U.S. plane, the command said in a statement last week. The U.S. complaint "distorted fact, blamed the innocent and attempted to fool the international community," the People's Liberation Army Southern Command responded in a statement Saturday. Hot from the China Watchersphere Shoppers return to a popular mall following the easing of pandemic restrictions in Beijing, Jan. 1, 2023. | Ng Han Guan/AP Photo —CHINA THREATENS FOREIGN COVID RESTRICTION RETALIATION: The Chinese government is threatening to retaliate against countries that have imposed entry restrictions — including mandatory pre-arrival negative Covid tests — on travelers arriving from China. "Some of these measures are disproportionate and simply unacceptable," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson MAO NING said on Tuesday, threatening unspecified "corresponding measures." A growing list of countries — including the U.S., Japan, Spain, France and Canada — have imposed testing requirements for incoming arrivals from China as Covid sweeps the country. Those demands are "not an excessive measure," World Health Organization emergencies chief MICHAEL RYAN said on Wednesday. Beijing is in denial mode. "China's COVID situation is predictable and under control," Mao said.  —TAIWAN IMPOSES ONE-YEAR MILITARY SERVICE: Taiwan's government has responded to growing concern about China's military threat by extending mandatory military service for adult males from the current four months to one year starting in 2024. That was an "incomparably difficult decision" necessary to "preserve our democratic and free way of life for future generations," Taiwan's President TSAI ING-WEN said in a speech last week. The extension risks Taiwanese youth being "used as cannon fodder by Taiwan independence' separatist forces," warned Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson WANG WENBIN. TRANSLATING CHINA  —SWAGGER, BLATHER, BLAME — QIN GANG'S SWANSONG: Former Chinese ambassador to the U.S. Qin Gang ended his tenure in Washington, D.C. with an opinion piece in the National Interest last month outlining the ruling Chinese Communist Party's world view. And he dedicated much of his farewell editorial to arguing that the U.S. and its allies and partners have gotten China all wrong. Qin's op-ed would have benefitted from an editor and a fact check. His omission of any mention of Covid's impact on China is glaring given the severity of the country's outbreak. But his op-ed allows for a handy three-category distillation of his diplomatic messaging — and its limitations — over the past 18 months. And it provides an indicator of the quality of discourse we can expect from him as foreign minister in the years ahead. Swagger Qin front-loads his op-ed with a raft of good economic news that sidesteps the World Bank's move last month to slash projections of Beijing's economic growth due to Covid and turmoil in the country's property sector. Instead, he trots out a flurry of statistics — 21 new pilot free trade zones, 19 free trade agreements, and a total of 160 million "market entities" (whatever they might be) — that he points to as proof of China's economic health. And he caps that data by warning critics to "think twice about the veracity and true intentions when they hear grumblings about China 'moving backwards' in reform and opening up, or 'having lost America.'" Blather Qin lards his op-ed with the standard empty catch-phrases and jargon mandatory in Chinese foreign ministry publications. These words and phrases offer a veneer of substance but are effectively meaningless in the context of Chinese authoritarian rule. They boost Qin's word count at the price of debasing his argument. His top-seven offending phrases: 1. Reform 2. Opening up 3. Win-win cooperation 4. Win-win outcomes 5. Zero-sum game 6. Promoting common development 7. A community with a shared future Blame Qin also channels the CCP's self-branding as an error-free entity prey to the malign intent of others. Qin elides China's intensifying military intimidation of Taiwan which included an incursion of a record number of nuclear weapons-capable bombers into the self-governing island's air defense identification zone last month. Instead, he blames "separatists and external forces" for stoking friction across the Taiwan Strait. And Qin attributes growing military tensions with Japan — fueled by increasingly frequent incursions of Chinese ships and aircraft into Japanese territory — to Tokyo's violation of a "status quo" between China and Japan regarding the disputed Senkaku/Diaoyutai islands. Qin also implicitly restates China's position that Russia's war on Ukraine was NATO's fault rather than that of Russian President VLADIMIR PUTIN. Qin avoids using the words "invasion" or "aggression," and instead attributes the "deeply saddening" conflict to unnamed parties "grounding one's own security on other countries' insecurity." HEADLINES Financial Times: "Chinese celebrities' Covid deaths subvert propaganda push to minimise outbreak"   Science: "China is flying blind as pandemic rages" The Market: "I think There Has Been Some Kind of Quiet Internal Revolt Against Xi Jinping's Personal Rule" HEADS UP  —JAPAN'S KISHIDA IS COMING TO WASHINGTON: Japanese Prime Minister FUMIO KISHIDA will travel to Washington, D.C. next week for a meeting with Biden, the White House announced on Tuesday. China will loom large in their Jan. 13 planned discussions of issues including "maintaining peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait." One Book, Three Questions Tim Green of Faceout Studio The Book:  China Coup: The Great Leap to Freedom The Author: ROGER GARSIDE is a former Beijing-based British diplomat and capital markets adviser. Responses have been edited for length and clarity. What is the most important takeaway from your book? That the totalitarian regime in China will soon end. Even before Covid, the regime was doomed by an array of serious problems: a moral crisis — including corruption — an economy fatally weakened by debt, a fragile financial system, an environmental catastrophe, great and growing social inequality, massive religious dissent, and international overreach that has turned the U.S. and its allies from benign partnership to hostility. These problems were produced by the very nature of the regime, which is therefore inherently incapable of solving them. A power struggle is underway between Xi Jinping and his opponents, including those who lead the coup d'état against him in my book. What was the most surprising thing you learned while researching and writing this book? That the regime that rules China is not authoritarian but totalitarian. Like all other such regimes, it relies on control, not trust. Indeed, it distrusts those whom it rules. As a result, it is outwardly strong but inwardly weak. What does your book tell us about the trajectory and future of U.S.-China relations?   If my prediction that the totalitarian regime will soon end proves to be wrong, U.S.-China relations will spiral into ever greater hostility. This hostility is not the result of policy choices: it stems from a conflict between two irreconcilable systems, democracy and autocracy. The U.S. and its allies have begun to mobilize their superiority in advanced technology, capital markets, international banking, reserve currencies, science and soft power to defeat the Chinese regime. If, as I predict, totalitarianism ends in China, relations between the two great powers of China and the U.S. could enjoy a rebirth in trust and co-operation hugely beneficial to all of mankind, in every sphere of human activity. Got a book to recommend? Tell me about it at pkine@politico.com. Thanks to: Mike Zapler, Heidi Vogt, Matt Kaminski, Doug Palmer, Bryan Bender, David Lim, Lara Seligman and digital producer Andrew Howard. Do you have tips? Chinese-language stories we might have missed? Would you like to contribute to China Watcher or comment on this week's items? Email us at chinawatcher@politico.com.   Follow us

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