February 28, 2023 Updated: March 1, 2023
Chairman Mike Gallagher
(R-Wis.) speaks during the first hearing on national security and Chinese
threats to America held by the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist
Party on Capitol Hill in Washington on Feb. 28, 2023. (Roberto Schmidt/AFP via
Getty Images)
China’s communist regime
is engaged in a concerted effort to undermine and replace the United States by
weaponizing Americans against one another, according to testimony received by a
new congressional committee focused on competition with the regime.
The House Select
Committee on Strategic Competition between the United States and the Chinese
Communist Party (CCP) held its first hearing on Feb. 28, titled simply “The
Chinese Communist Party’s Threat to America.”
Committee Chair Mike Gallagher
(R-Wis.) described the competition between the United States and CCP as an
“existential struggle,” and said that the CCP, which rules China as a
single-party state, was pitting “America against America,” hoping to topple the
United States from within.
Ranking member Raja
Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.) agreed with the assessment, saying that the regime
sought to exploit the political divisions endemic to democratic societies
against the United States.
“The CCP wants us to be
fractious, partisan, and prejudiced,” Krishnamoorthi said.
“We must rise to the
occasion and prove them wrong.”
To that end, however,
Gallagher noted that many powerful and monied interests within the United
States had made their fortunes outsourcing American jobs to China, and were
pushing back on U.S. efforts to secure itself against the regime.
“The CCP has found
friends on Wall Street, in Fortune 500 C-suites, and on K Street who are ready
and willing to oppose efforts to push back,” Gallagher said.
“This strategy has worked
well in the past, and the CCP is confident it will work again. Our task on this
committee is to ensure that it does not.”
‘Tech-Powered Dystopia’
Former National Security
adviser H.R. McMaster testified on the issue, saying that the United States had
“fallen behind” in the strategic competition with the CCP and that continued
investments into China by American corporations were “underwriting our own
demise.”
McMaster said that the
“false promises of liberalization” had led to a corporate and political class
within America that had largely expected continued investment in China to
transform it into a more modern and democratic society.
Instead, he said, the
regime had doubled down on its Marxist ideology and was now exporting
destructive ideologies to erode support for the West.
To that end, McMaster
said that a “curriculum of self loathing,” which asserts the United States is
the reason for the world’s problems, had taken hold of much of the popular and
academic culture in the West, and prevented the nation from adequately
defending itself against continued espionage, theft, and repression by the CCP.
Likewise, Rep. Darin
LaHood (R-Ill.) said that corporate America was “scared and worried” about the
possibility of angering CCP authorities, and that the regime was exploiting
that fear to undermine the United States on the world stage.
“China has a plan to
replace the United States,” LaHood said.
As such, Gallagher said
that the Select Committee would help to coordinate legislative efforts from
across congressional committees, and focus on tackling the CCP’s ideological,
technological, economic, and military efforts against the United States and its
allies and partners.
The time to prevent the
CCP from replacing the United States with a “tech-powered dystopia,” Gallagher
said, was now.
“The CCP is laser-focused
on its vision for the future,” Gallagher said. “A world crowded with
techno-totalitarian surveillance states where human rights are subordinate to
the whims of the Party.”
“For the time being, it’s
still up to us to decide if that’s the future we want for our children, but it
won’t be for much longer. Time is not on our side.”
CCP Preparing for War
In addition to seeking to
replace the United States, the CCP is also preparing for war, the Select
Committee heard.
Speaking on the issue of
the regime’s ambition to invade Taiwan, former deputy National Security adviser
Matthew Pottinger said that the CCP’s military wing, the People’s Liberation
Army (PLA), was preparing for such a conflict, including the possibility that
it would have to fight the United States.
“The PLA has been
receiving massive amounts of investment … to try to fill gaps that they would
need to fill to be able to invade Taiwan,” Pottinger said.
“We know that the PLA is
training for the likelihood that the U.S. would be part of the fight.”
Said capabilities
included amphibious and air lift platforms, missiles, and long-range
capabilities designed to deter the United States from entering a war between
the CCP and Taiwan’s democratic government.
To that end, Pottinger
also noted that CCP leader Xi Jinping regularly praised former CCP leader Mao
Zedong’s approval of using preemptive strikes against adversaries, and had
expressed a willingness to see China destroyed in order to rebuild it without
American influence.
Asked whether or not the
regime might attempt a preemptive attack on the United States to prevent it
from coming to Taiwan’s aid, Potting said simply, “It’s possible.”
“There’s no longer any
excuse for being fooled about Beijing’s intentions,” Pottinger said. “The canon
of Chairman Xi’s publicly available statements is too voluminous, and the
accumulated actions of his regime too brazen, to be misunderstood at this late
hour.”
“The proverbial fig leaf
has blown away, exposing the regime and its deep hostility toward the
democratic West and the liberal international order.”
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