Amanda Andrade-Rhoades/Sipa USA via AP Images
Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI) speaks to members of the media during a meeting of House Republicans at the Capitol in Washington, January 3, 2023.
In a severely polarized Congress, one possible oasis of constructive bipartisanship is the new House Select Committee on China, whose full title refers to “Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party.” The chair is Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin, one of the non-MAGA House Republicans and a well-informed critic of Chinese economic and geopolitical strategy.
Mike Wessel, a leading Democratic critic of China and of past U.S. fantasies about Beijing, says, “Chairman Gallagher has shown he’s serious in the past and has reached across the aisle to address the China challenge. His initial staffing decisions show that he’s bringing people in who can solve problems and are not simply seeking partisan advantage. Clearly, we will have to see where things go, but initial steps make me optimistic.”
In fact, Speaker Kevin McCarthy has put none of the usual-suspect lunatic-right Republicans on the committee.
The ranking Democrat, Raja Krishnamoorthi of Illinois, is a respected China expert, who is also on the House Intelligence Committee. He has been the lead Democratic sponsor of several bills aimed at containing China, including legislation co-sponsored with Gallagher that would bar TikTok from the U.S. Other Krishnamoorthi legislation would require a National Intelligence Estimate on China’s strategy of buying up port facilities worldwide.
Gallagher has identified several key issues for the committee, including cybersecurity, inbound and outbound investment, China’s menacing of Taiwan, its access to advanced technology and theft of intellectual property, purchases of farmland and real estate, as well as trade and supply chain concerns. That’s certainly the right list.
China policy has been one of the few areas of genuine bipartisanship, beginning with the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, whose reports and hearings have functioned since its creation by Congress late in the Clinton era in 2000 as a kind of opposition party to naïve WTO-centered globalism, and continuing with Trump’s tough stand on China, in contrast to his indulgence of Russia and Putin.
The commission’s hearings, research studies, and annual reports provide a complementary agenda to the committee’s work. James Mann, a respected China expert who is a member of the U.S.-China Commission (and author of the prescient 2007 American Prospect piece “America’s China Fantasy”), tells me that the bipartisan Select China Committee could be very useful as long as Republicans resist the temptation to use it for fishing expeditions against Democrats.
That seems unlikely. Kevin McCarthy needs this fig leaf of bipartisanship; Gallagher is serious about his mission; and if the committee did degenerate into partisan cheap shots, its Democratic members would be gone in a heartbeat.
Biden’s several industrial policies were the work of a bipartisan alliance, much of it motivated by concerns about China and the growing reliance of the U.S. economy on China’s supply chains. Some of the 65 Democrats who voted against the committee’s creation expressed skepticism about Republican good faith. Twenty-three progressives led by Pramila Jayapal cited the risk of anti-Asian xenophobia. This also seems unlikely, with Krishnamoorthi as ranking Democrat and Andy Kim of New Jersey as a member.
Rep. Jim McGovern, the ranking Democrat on the Rules Committee, created political space for most Democrats to back the panel when he announced his own support early. McGovern told reporters, “If not your usual looking-for-conspiracy-theories and promoting xenophobia, then something good can come out of it.”
On the whole, the Biden China policy has been excellent, intensifying the strategy of quarantining Beijing’s access to advanced technology, and resisting China’s military incursions, while working diplomatically to prevent a shooting war. Yet part of the Biden administration, notably Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and some of the career staff at the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, remain wedded to wishful globalism and the premise that China will evolve into a market democracy if America just makes nice. The bipartisan select committee will provide a useful counterweight.
At a time when House Republicans are mostly descending into the worst kind of partisan demagoguery, the China committee is a reminder of what’s possible.
