After 15 rounds of voting, Republican Kevin McCarthy was elected speaker of the House of Representatives, the lower house of the United States Congress. In 1860, when abolitionist disputes were at their height, the United States last encountered a crisis that so starkly revealed the polarization in the country’s politics. The election of Kevin McCarthy does not mean the end of internal polarization, but the US can create a united front in foreign policy to take more aggressive steps against China.
“The United States House Select Committee on Strategic Competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party” will serve as the basis for US political action against China in 2023. Republican Kevin McCarthy, in his inaugural address to the House of Representatives, underlined the debt and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) as the two long-term problems facing American society. “As for the Chinese Communist Party, we will create a bipartisan Select Committee on China to investigate how to bring back the hundreds of thousands of jobs that went to China. Then we will win this economic competition,” said McCarthy.
Four main tasks
The Republican-led Select Committee is seemingly considered a continuation of the China Task Force announced in 2020. McCarthy counters that, although lacking legislative authority, the Select Committee would take into account information from many fields in a holistic manner, therefore increasing Democratic representation. McCarthy will thus get closer to realizing his long-awaited dream of a united front against China.
While Democrats have previously declined to join the China Task Force chaired by Representative Mike McCaul, this is not the case with the Select Committee. While the House of Representatives created the Select Committee by an overwhelming majority (365 to 65), prominent Democrats do not hesitate to indicate their interest in the platform. “Obviously, as a national security person and someone who’s been talking a lot about some of the economic security issues related to China,” said Elissa Slotkin, the Democratic Representative for Michigan and a former CIA officer, “I’m certainly interested in the committee.” The US news outlets report that there will be 16 members on the committee, nine Republicans and seven Democrats.
Intelligence officer in Iraq, chairman of the committee on China
Kevin McCarthy has appointed Mike Gallagher, a Republican who was elected to the House for the first time in 2016, to chair the Select Committee. Former US intelligence officer in Iraq during the occupation, Gallagher now argues that “to combat the threat posed by the Chinese Communist Party” is his top priority. “America spent decades pursuing policies that welcomed China into the international system,” stated Gallagher. “Restoring supply chains and end critical economic dependencies on China, strengthening the military, ending the CCP’s theft of American personal data and intellectual property, and contrast the CCP’s techno-totalitarian state with the values of the Free World”; these are the four main tasks of the Select Committee, as outlined by Gallagher on his personal website.
“We are in a new Cold War”
House of Representatives Speaker Kevin McCarthy and Select Committee chair Mike Gallagher’s opposition to China is stark enough to overshadow the Democrats. So much so that McCarthy and Gallagher claim to be in the midst of a war, although US President Joe Biden indicated in his meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping on November 14, 2022, that there “need not be a new Cold War.” In fact, for the op-ed the two lawmakers co-wrote for Fox News, they preferred the title, “China and the US are locked in a cold war. We must win it.”
For McCarthy and Gallagher, who argue that China’s “peaceful rise” was a pure fiction, the only option is to tear down some bridges. “Our goal will be to promote overwhelming economic superiority,” the duo wrote, noting that the United States needs to build its own supply chains in critical industries like rare elements and drugs.
Also arguing that China advances its Belt and Road Initiative to ensnare countries into a debt trap, McCarthy and Gallagher furthered, “we will look at how the United States and freedom-loving countries can work together to push viable alternatives to the Belt and Road Initiative. The time-tested formula for victory—while deterring war— as President Reagan proved, is peace through strength.”
“I want to go to Taiwan”
US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and Elected Committee Chairman Mike Gallagher have set their eyes on Taiwan as another front in their opposition to China. “We cannot afford to misread the CCP’s intentions,” the duo wrote on December 8, 2022,” the Select Committee will make the urgent case for aiding Taiwan in its self-defense and build relationships with our other Indo-Pacific allies.” Contending that China uses its growing economy to modernize its military write, they added, “we must also develop new weapons and stockpiles to project power, preserve our global influence, and protect our forces, including in space and cyberspace.” “
Emphasizing the importance of military aid to Taiwan, McCarthy’s future visit to the island, like his predecessor Nancy Pelosi, will not be surprising. Defending that the US Congress members would not take permission from anyone to go to any part of the world, McCarthy criticized Pelosi for not bringing a Republican on her trip to Taiwan. “You are stating that we, as Americans, are speaking with one voice and unified, in particular, in support of Taiwan,” said McCarthey and asked Pelosi, “then why not include both parties?” The Republican lawmaker replied, “I will fly to Taiwan if I become House Speaker,” when he was asked whether he planned to visit Taiwan.
China is on edge about McCarthy’s travel plans, even though he has not yet announced a possible visit to Taiwan after his election. Lü Xiang, a research fellow at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times that the United States may put the untimed bombs in the Taiwan Straits and the South China Sea and “for China in the next two years, it is imperative to be fully vigilant.”
McCarthy’s Witch Hunt resurrect in 2023 with the same name?
The Republicans-led Select Committee is not only to determine Washington’s foreign policy toward China. Its anti-Chinese policies are also expected to redesign American society.
McCarthy and Gallagher have clarified that banning the popular video-sharing app TikTok, used by 80 million people in the United States alone, is one of their biggest wishes. The duo believes the Chinese Communist Party may track users through the app, although TikTok migrated user data to American firm Oracle during the Trump administration to assuage the lawmakers’ concerns. Advocating to keep a close watch on Chinese students studying in the United States, Michael Waltz, a Republican, thinks the struggle against Beijing can be achieved with “the efforts of the entire community.”
The possibility of restoring policies reminiscent of the anti-communist “witch hunt” in the 1950s under the leadership of Kevin McCarthy – a tragic irony of history – worries the international community.
