Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party

Floor Speech

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Mr. GALLAGHER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding and for his leadership.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in strong support of H. Res. 11, establishing a bipartisan Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party.

In 1946, a great Wisconsinite, George Kennan, argued that dealing with the Soviet threat was the greatest task our diplomacy has ever faced and probably the greatest it will ever have to face.

Today, due to its aggression and its economic strength and our unique economic entanglement with it, the Chinese Communist Party represents an even greater test for American diplomacy.

As Secretary of State Anthony Blinken put it last year: China is the only country with both the intent to reshape the international order and increasingly the economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to do it.

The threat posed by the CCP is not abstract. The CCP's aggression is not limited to Taiwan, the South China Sea, Hong Kong, or even Xinjiang, where two successive administrations, Republican and Democratic alike, have determined that the CCP is engaging in genocide.

We see this aggression here at home where the party has stolen American intellectual property, technology, and industrial capacity undermining our economy and good-paying American jobs. It is here at home where the party's extraterritorial totalitarianism terrorizes Chinese students studying at our universities and targets Americans of Chinese descent. And it is here at home where thousands of Americans are poisoned each year by fentanyl precursors manufactured in China and distributed thanks to a complex Chinese money laundering network.

It is time to understand the urgency of the threat. It is time to reclaim our economic independence in key areas.

The select committee will expose the CCP's coordinated whole-of- society strategy to undermine American leadership and American sovereignty while working on a bipartisan basis and with the committees of jurisdiction to identify long overdue, commonsense approaches to counter CCP aggression.

I stress working on a bipartisan basis because that is the only way we are going to be successful over the long term. The CCP doesn't pose a danger to just Republicans or Democrats. It is a threat to all Americans.

Mr. Speaker, I commend my colleague for his work on the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act. That is one of the most consequential and significant pieces of legislation that we passed on a bipartisan basis in recent years. It is up to us to ensure that it is fully implemented, and there is much work to be done on that front.

We need to have a united front here in Congress to counter the Chinese Communist Party, and in so doing, at every step along the way, we must make sure that we are drawing a distinction between the party and the Chinese people with whom we have no quarrel and who are often the primary victims of CCP aggression and repression.

In sum, there is no more critical challenge facing our Nation today.

I am grateful to Speaker McCarthy for his leadership and establishing this select committee, for giving me the mission of ensuring this stays bipartisan. We heard his sincerity in wanting this to be an area where Republicans and Democrats can work together.

I would also like to thank Chairman Mike McCaul who chaired the China task force and did a phenomenal job. We are building upon the foundation that he laid with the China task force. I look forward to working with him as this effort moves forward.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support this critical legislation. I look forward to working with my Democratic colleagues. I see many friends sitting on the other side of the Chamber.

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