GOP pick to lead House China committee vows to win ‘new Cold War’

WASHINGTON — The House on Tuesday voted 365-65 to establish a special committee on China, and the lawmaker Republicans tapped to lead the bipartisan panel has vowed that Congress will use it to “win the new Cold War.”

Rep. Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin — who served as the top Republican on the Armed Services Committee’s personnel panel in the last Congress — has laid out an agenda for the China committee that includes several key defense priorities. The 16-member committee will consist of nine Republicans and seven Democrats.

Gallagher told Defense News that while the Armed Services and Foreign Affairs committees as well as the Appropriations Committee’s defense panel would take the lead on defense-related issues, the China committee would serve as “an incubator or accelerator for [Chinese Communist Party]-related legislation.”

“As someone who’s spent a lot of the last six years focusing on how we restore deterrence in the Indo-Pacific and deter hot war over Taiwan, I think a lot of what we can do on the select committee is tease out sort of the why,” Gallagher said. “Why does this matter? Explain to the American people about why they should care about helping Taiwan defend itself and arming Taiwan to the teeth.”

He said that will entail hearings and reports aimed at outlining the ”repercussions on global financial markets if China attacked Taiwan” and “stitching together those pieces in a way they’re currently not stitched together.”

The committee could hold its first hearing as soon as February.

In addition to Taiwan, Gallagher intends to use the committee to address Beijing’s military modernization efforts and the U.S. defense-industrial base’s dependence on China.

“That’s not just purely a hard-power defense question,” he said. “You have to tease out the economic and financial implications of that.”

“As China uses its growing economy to modernize its military, we must also develop new weapons and stockpiles to project power, preserve our global influence, and protect our forces, including in space and cyberspace,” Gallagher wrote on Sunday in a Fox News op-ed that framed Sino-U.S. competition as a 21st century Cold War .

He wrote that the “first step is to restore our supply chains and end critical economic dependencies on China,” noting that it produces “90% of the world’s rare earth metals, alloys and permanent magnets.”

Congress made onshoring defense supply chains a priority last year, passing $52 billion in subsidies and other tax incentives for companies to produce semiconductors — which are needed to produce everything from Javelin anti-tank missiles to F-35 fighter jets — within the United States.

The fiscal 2023 National Defense Authorization Act also doubled the net worth of the National Defense Stockpile — the U.S. strategic reserve of critical minerals — injecting it with $1 billion after years of atrophy and neglect. The stockpile includes critical minerals that are largely obtained from China, including antimony — a mineral needed to produce bullets and ammunition .

“We’re dangerously dependent on China for basic building blocks of our economy, resulting in shortages of critical products like semiconductors and rare earth minerals, both of which are largely produced in China today,” House Rules Committee Chairman Tom Cole, R-Okla., said ahead of the vote.

In addition to traditional defense issues, the committee will have a wide remit that includes Republican priorities such as China’s role in exporting fentanyl and investigating the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic. Other initiatives that could garner bipartisan support include nascent efforts to ban the Chinese-owned social media app TikTok and investigations into Chinese influence at U.S. universities.

Much of the legislation aimed at wrestling defense supply chains away from China emerged as proposals from House Republicans’ China Task Force in the last Congress. That partisan task force produced numerous bipartisan proposals among its more than 400 recommendations. It also liaised closely with Taiwan’s’ diplomatic office in Washington to address a multibillion-dollar backlog of arms sales to Taipei .

Gallagher said the China committee’s work will make it easier for the Foreign Affairs Committee to address the backlog of weapons that “have been approved but not delivered to Taiwan.”

Democrats opted to boycott the China Task Force shortly before its formation in 2020, accusing former President Donald Trump of scapegoating Beijing for his mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic.

While many House Democrats expressed reservations about working with Republicans to establish the China committee, most voted in favor of establishing the panel amid assurances from GOP leaders that it would remain a bipartisan endeavor.

Rep. Jim McGovern of Massachusetts, the top Democrat on the Rules Committee, voted to form the China panel but warned against turning it into a venue for “Republican conspiracy theories and partisan talking points” or “a place that perpetuates anti-Asian hate.”

Some Democrats who have served on the House Armed Services Committee expressed more confidence that the China committee would produce serious bipartisan work, including Reps. Ro Khanna of California and Ruben Gallego of Arizona.

Gallego, who chaired the intelligence and special operations panel last year, told Defense News in an interview on Tuesday that he would like to join the China committee.

“I think I could bring a lot of experience that I’ve gained — the experience I’ve taken from my subcommittee — as well as other experiences on the committee dealing in the [Indo-Pacific] area, as well as the Huaweis of the world and even things like TikTok,” Gallego said, referring to the Chinese telecommunications firm Huawei, which has been the target of scrutiny by the U.S.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., noted that he spoke with Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., about “what this committee will be and who we’ll be putting on it,” while praising Gallagher as a “focused and studied” lawmaker who would lead the panel in a bipartisan manner.

“We want serious lawmakers,” McCarthy said on the House floor. “This isn’t for somebody to go in and [go] viral because they want to make some point.”

Bryant Harris is the Congress reporter for Defense News. He has covered U.S. foreign policy, national security, international affairs and politics in Washington since 2014. He has also written for Foreign Policy, Al-Monitor, Al Jazeera English and IPS News.

华盛顿——周二，众议院以 365 比 65 的投票结果决定成立一个中国问题特别委员会。共和党人推选领导这个两党小组的议员誓言，国会将利用该委员会“赢得新冷战”。

威斯康星州众议员迈克·加拉格尔（Mike Gallagher）——上届国会曾担任众议院军事委员会人事小组的首席共和党议员——为中国事务委员会制定了一份议程，其中包括几项关键的国防优先事项。该委员会由16名成员组成，其中9名共和党人和7名民主党人。

加拉格尔告诉《防务新闻》，虽然军事委员会、外交事务委员会以及拨款委员会的国防小组将在国防相关问题上发挥主导作用，但中国委员会将作为“与中国共产党有关的立法的孵化器或加速器”。

“过去六年，我一直致力于研究如何恢复印太地区的威慑力，以及如何阻止因台湾而爆发的热战。我认为，特别委员会可以做的很多事情就是探究其中的缘由，”加拉格尔说。“为什么这件事如此重要？要向美国人民解释，为什么他们应该关心帮助台湾自卫，以及为什么应该武装台湾使其拥有强大的力量。”

他表示，这将包括举行听证会和撰写报告，旨在概述“如果中国攻击台湾，会对全球金融市场产生的影响”，并“以目前尚未整合的方式将这些碎片拼凑起来”。

委员会最早可能在二月份举行首次听证会。

除了台湾问题外，加拉格尔还打算利用该委员会来解决北京的军事现代化努力以及美国国防工业基础对中国的依赖问题。

“这不仅仅是一个硬实力防御问题，”他说。“你还得仔细分析其中的经济和金融影响。”

“随着中国利用其不断增长的经济实现军事现代化，我们也必须发展新的武器和储备，以投射力量，维护我们的全球影响力，并保护我们的军队，包括在太空和网络空间，”加拉格尔周日在福克斯新闻的一篇评论文章中写道，该文章将中美竞争描述为 21 世纪的冷战。

他写道，“第一步是恢复我们的供应链，结束对中国的关键经济依赖”，并指出中国生产“世界上 90% 的稀土金属、合金和永磁体”。

去年，国会将国防供应链回流国内列为优先事项，通过了 520 亿美元的补贴和其他税收优惠，鼓励企业在美国境内生产半导体——从标枪反坦克导弹到 F-35 战斗机，所有产品都需要半导体。

2023财年国防授权法案还将美国国家国防储备（美国关键矿产战略储备）的净值增加了一倍，在多年萎缩和疏于维护后，为其注入了10亿美元。该储备包括主要从中国进口的关键矿产，例如锑——一种用于生产子弹和弹药的矿物。

“我们对中国经济的基本组成部分有着危险的依赖，导致半导体和稀土矿物等关键产品短缺，而这两种产品目前主要在中国生产，”众议院规则委员会主席、俄克拉荷马州共和党议员汤姆·科尔在投票前表示。

除了传统的国防问题外，该委员会的职权范围还很广泛，涵盖共和党优先关注的议题，例如中国在芬太尼出口中的角色以及调查新冠疫情的起源。其他可能获得两党支持的举措包括：初步尝试禁止中国公司拥有的社交媒体应用TikTok，以及调查中国对美国大学的影响力。

许多旨在将国防供应链从中国转移出去的立法提案，都源自上届国会众议院共和党中国工作组的提议。该党派工作组在其提出的400多项建议中，包含许多两党共同支持的提案。此外，该工作组还与台湾驻华盛顿外交机构密切合作，以解决对台军售积压的数十亿美元问题。

加拉格尔表示，中国委员会的工作将使外交事务委员会更容易解决“已获批准但尚未交付给台湾”的武器积压问题。

民主党人在 2020 年中国特别工作组成立前不久选择抵制该工作组，指责前总统唐纳德·特朗普将应对 COVID-19 疫情不力的责任推卸给北京。

尽管许多众议院民主党人对与共和党人合作成立中国委员会表示保留意见，但在共和党领导人保证这将是一项两党合作的努力后，大多数人还是投票赞成成立该委员会。

马萨诸塞州众议员吉姆·麦戈文是规则委员会的首席民主党议员，他投票支持成立中国问题小组，但他警告说，不要将其变成“共和党阴谋论和党派言论”的场所，或者“助长反亚裔仇恨的地方”。

一些曾在众议院军事委员会任职的民主党人表示，他们对中国委员会能够开展严肃的两党合作工作更有信心，其中包括来自加利福尼亚州的众议员罗·卡纳和来自亚利桑那州的众议员鲁本·加列戈。

去年担任情报和特种作战委员会主席的加列戈周二在接受《防务新闻》采访时表示，他希望加入中国委员会。

加列戈表示：“我认为我可以将我积累的大量经验——包括我在小组委员会获得的经验，以及我在委员会处理印太地区事务、华为公司乃至TikTok等问题的其他经验带到这里。”他指的是中国电信公司华为，该公司一直是美国审查的目标。

众议院议长凯文·麦卡锡（加州共和党籍）指出，他与少数党领袖哈基姆·杰弗里斯（纽约州民主党籍）讨论了“这个委员会的组成以及我们将任命哪些成员”，同时称赞加拉格尔是一位“专注且深思熟虑”的立法者，他将以两党合作的方式领导该委员会。

麦卡锡在众议院发言时说：“我们需要的是认真负责的立法者。这不是为了让某些人进来，然后通过博取眼球来表达某种观点。”

布莱恩特·哈里斯是《防务新闻》的国会记者。自2014年以来，他一直在华盛顿报道美国外交政策、国家安全、国际事务和政治。他还曾为《外交政策》、《Al-Monitor》、《半岛电视台英语频道》和IPS新闻撰稿。