Commentary
The U.S. Congress is waking up to the realization that the wishes and hopes of the China engagement crowd over the last several decades—that communist China would moderate its aggressive behavior over time as a natural result of massive foreign investment and trade incentives—have been a complete failure.
That realization was jump-started by the Trump administration through trade negotiations resulting in a tariff regimen on Chinese exports to counteract mercantilist trade practices and the ongoing theft of U.S. intellectual property.
One of the first actions taken by the new Republican-led House of Representatives was to establish the House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the U.S. and the Chinese Communist Party, which was created on a bipartisan 365-65 vote that included 146 Democrats. Its express purpose, as stated in House Resolution 11, is “to investigate and submit policy recommendations concerning the status of the economic, technological, and security progress of the Chinese Communist Party and its competition with the United States,” including supply chain dependencies on critical and strategic materials, Chinese spying, organ harvesting, theft of U.S. intellectual property, manufacture of synthetic drugs, coercion of U.S. allies in East and South Asia, and other challenges….