The Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party sounds premature in the headline of its September 12, 2024 press release: “Congress Passes 25 Bills to Combat Chinese Communist Party Threats.” The U.S. Congress has two chambers, and the U.S. Senate has yet to follow suit.
However, the first paragraph of the release states more specifically that “the House of Representatives passed 25 crucial pieces of legislation to protect Americans against the military, economic, ideological, and technological threats posed by the Chinese Communist Party.” The committee takes credit for promoting the goals of 12 of the bills.
The press release provides links to all of the legislation, which includes:
The BIOSECURE Act, “a bill to protect Americans’ genetic data and U.S. firms from predatory CCP-backed biotechnology companies.”
The Countering CCP Drones Act, “which places Chinese military drone company DJI on the FCC’s Covered List, thereby prohibiting future DJI models from being approved and operating in the United States.”
The Decoupling from Foreign Adversarial Battery Dependence Act, which forbids procurement of batteries from six Chinese companies, both to end dependence on China for the technology and to prevent the Chinese Communist Party from “profit[ing] from its genocide and human rights abuses.” The committee chairman, John Moolenaar (shown above with House Speaker Mike Johnson), refers to “indisputable evidence that two CCP-aligned battery makers, Gotion and CATL, are deeply connected to forced labor and the ongoing genocide in China.”
The Protecting American Agriculture from Foreign Adversaries Act, which “instructs the Secretary of Agriculture to flag concerning land purchases by foreign adversary for CFIUS review.” CFIUS is the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States.
The Restrictions on Confucius Institutes and Chinese Entities of Concern Act, which restricts funding “of institutions of higher education that maintain a Confucius Institute or similar People’s Republic of China entity of concern.” Moolenaar says: “The Chinese Communist party funds Confucius Institutes because it wants to manipulate the minds of young Americans…. We cannot allow American taxpayer dollars to support universities that allow the presence of these institutes to influence and manipulate their students.”
The End Chinese Dominance of Electric Vehicles in America Act, which makes it harder for “foreign entities of concern” to qualify for certain tax credits.
The PRC Malign Influence Fund Authorization Act, which gives the State Department funding “to work with allies, partners, and other nations to counter the CCP’s malign influence and dept-diplomacy.”
The Science and Technology Agreement Enhanced Congressional Notification Act, which “requires the Department of State to notify Congress at least 30 days ahead of any science and technology agreements with China.”
Other China Week bills pertain to Taiwan, economic espionage, export controls, cyber threats, the WHO Pandemic Preparedness Treaty, and cooperation with allies.
“We wanted to combine them all into one week so that you had a real sharp focus on the fact that we need to be aggressive in confronting the threat that China poses,” said House Majority Leader Steven Scalise.
“They’re all bills that should be very bipartisan, because there are things that China is doing right now that are direct threats to our country’s national security, and if we get strong bipartisan votes, you have a higher chance of getting through the Senate.”
Not everybody is appreciative. One of the top propaganda-spouters over at the Chinese Embassy in Washington, Liu Pengyu, slams the legislation as “full of Cold War thinking and zero-sum game concepts, exaggerating the ‘China threat,’…clamoring for a ‘new Cold War’ and ‘decoupling.’ ”
If enacted, the bills “will cause serious interference to China-U.S. relations,” he says. Well, we’ll keep our fingers crossed.
