WASHINGTON —
The U.S. House of Representatives Homeland Security Committee held a hearing on Wednesday (March 5) to focus on how to deal with the threat posed by the Chinese Communist Party to U.S. national security. At the hearing, the acting chairman of the committee pointed out that China has been steadily pursuing a long-term strategy aimed at replacing the United States for decades, with the ultimate goal of establishing a world order centered on the vision and values of the Chinese Communist Party. Experts said that China’s threat to the United States has penetrated every corner of the United States, and the United States should respond to the Chinese threat with the same strength it used in the past to combat and prevent terrorism.
China’s all-round penetration and threats to the United States
In his opening remarks at the hearing, Michael Guest, the committee’s acting chairman, said that for decades, China has steadily pursued a long-term strategy aimed at replacing the United States as the world’s leading power.
“China is playing the long game. It has been building up strength for decades. China’s ultimate goal is not to establish a peaceful balance of power with the West, but to establish its own dominant position. A world order centered around the vision and values of the Chinese Communist Party, an order that is very different from the unparalleled freedom and prosperity of ‘American Politics’,” he said.
He said that in recent years, China has continued to engage in transnational repression, intellectual property theft and espionage in the United States. All of these activities have not exceeded the threshold of traditional conflict, but the United States needs to take proactive measures to respond to the Chinese Communist Party’s actions that endanger homeland security.
Bill Evanina, former director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, testified that the greatest threat facing the United States comes from the Chinese Communist Party, and it is an existential threat.
“This threat is complex, malicious, and strategic, with the U.S. private sector and academia as the primary battlegrounds. Xi Jinping has taken an all-encompassing, all-people approach to driving the Chinese Communist Party’s investment, checks, infiltration, paralysis, influence, and theft in every corner and aspect of the United States.”
Evanina said that the CCP’s theft of American intellectual property and trade secrets has caused the United States to suffer annual economic losses of up to $300 billion to $600 billion, equivalent to an after-tax loss of $4,000 to $6,000 per year for each American family of four. China’s recent threatening actions against the United States also include China’s sophisticated surveillance balloons flying over U.S. airspace, China’s establishment of technical surveillance stations in Cuba, control of the world’s maritime ports, and strategic purchases of land near U.S. military bases. In addition, he said that the maliciousness of fentanyl, TikTok, etc. has already affected the local level.
Craig Singleton, senior director of the China program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, warned at the hearing that China is using American academic institutions to infiltrate the country.
“There used to be more than 120 Confucius Institutes in the U.S., and now there are less than 14 left, but they haven’t actually disappeared, they’ve just been rebranded and renamed, using other names that are harder to track. What’s worse is that we’re seeing a proliferation of these Chinese-controlled outreach programs in the U.S. from kindergarten to high school,” Singleton said. “There’s absolutely no coordination or enforcement in these programs.”
Evanina said the United States needs to respond to China with the same standards it used to respond to terrorism. “Our current domestic vulnerabilities are unacceptable. The flashing warning lights are clear. I believe we must respond to this existential threat with the same urgency, leadership, spending and strategy we have used to combat and prevent terrorism over the past 20 years. I ask this committee, isn’t this terrorism?” he said.
Let the American people understand the threat from China
Elwana said the U.S. government must strengthen its messaging internally about the threat from China and convey to the American people why these practices are important.
“Because in our generation, culturally, the Russians, during the Cold War, they were bad. We beat them in the 1980 Olympics. We knew in 1979 that the Iranians were always bad. We haven’t had that experience with the Chinese Communist Party, and so historically our country, our voters don’t view China the way we view Iran and Russia. I think we have to do a better job of pushing the issues more effectively and explaining why these practices are important,” he said.
Rush Doshi, assistant professor of security studies at Georgetown University’s Walsh School of Foreign Service, testified that China poses many challenges to U.S. security and even threatens the daily lives of tens of millions of Americans. He specifically mentioned fentanyl.
He said China is reluctant to crack down on the fentanyl problem because they would rather the problem persist so they can have leverage in negotiations with Washington.
He suggested that the U.S. government strengthen sanctions on entities involved in the fentanyl trade, including Chinese financial institutions. The U.S. Congress can link progress on the fentanyl issue with other Chinese priorities to negotiate with the Chinese government. Congress can also pass the Corporate Transparency Act to track the actual owners of Chinese shell companies and combat money laundering, as well as pass the Fentanyl Act to list fentanyl-related substances in the Controlled Substances Act.
Tariffs are also a tool
On March 4, Trump announced an additional 10% tariff on China, bringing the total tariff rate recently imposed by the United States on Chinese goods to 20%. Trump said this was in response to China’s inaction in curbing the flow of fentanyl, an opioid, into the United States.
Josh Brechen, a member of the House Homeland Security Committee, asked, from the perspective of tariff policy, how should the United States draw public attention to the real and genuine threat from China so that the American people support the president’s decision, even though it may come at some cost?
Singleton replied that tariffs are indeed an important tool of geopolitical leverage as long as they are used properly. Especially at the current time when China’s economy is slowing down, tariffs will be more effective than sanctions. China’s economy now relies almost entirely on overcapacity and exports, and the implementation of tariff measures can target the weaknesses of China’s export model.
“I think we can use tariffs to change China’s non-market behavior, and fentanyl is a great example of that,” Singleton said. “I think the president of the United States is using tariffs as a pressure tool in this way to achieve a change in Chinese behavior. … We need to take a national approach to this problem, and part of that is to have different economic pillars, sanctions, foreign investment reviews, sectoral export control bans to prevent our technology from flowing into China’s military and defense sectors.”
Establish a special department to deal with China like the Soviet Union
Michael Pillsbury, author of “The Hundred-Year Marathon” and senior fellow for Chinese strategy at the Heritage Foundation, testified that the United States and China are in a long-term competition. How will this end? The Chinese believe that the United States is looking for another Gorbachev and hopes that the Chinese Communist Party will collapse. Xi Jinping is very defensive and well prepared for this. However, the fact is that the US government has not tried to create a Gorbachev in China or overthrow the Chinese Communist Party. The White House does not even have an annual report evaluating the US performance in this regard. This is a vacuum that the US Congress can help fill.
Pillsbury pointed out that the United States has not yet established a new agency specifically to deal with the threat from China, as it did when it dealt with the Soviet Union, and this is related to the national security of the United States.
“During the Cold War, starting in 1947, Congress and the president established new agencies to deal with the Soviet threat. They created the National Security Council. They created the Central Intelligence Agency. They created the United States Air Force. They created the Office of the Secretary of Defense. All of this stemmed from the recognition of the Soviet threat,” Pillsbury said. “Looking at China today, although there is a lot of talk, no new agencies or organizations have been established to deal with the Chinese threat.”
He cited President Trump’s mention of shipbuilding in his speech to Congress on Tuesday as an example of the importance of establishing a new department. “He wants to set up a shipbuilding bureau to catch up with China. By the way, there are data that show that for every ship we build, they build 300 ships. So this is again a homeland security issue. Does the secretary of homeland security need a China department that reports directly to her? And then what would that department look like and how many people would it have? It’s issues like this that I worry about the most.”
Pillsbury believes that the United States must track high-level political situations in Beijing and needs to know what is happening that affects U.S. interests. “Frankly speaking, this idea comes from President Trump, who once asked this question: Our politics are reported in the newspapers every day, who can tell me what Xi Jinping is worried about? This is difficult to do. We need to spend more time on this,” Pillsbury said.