CCP Exporting ‘Ethno-Nationalism and Totalitarianism’ Globally: Rep. Torres

Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.) speaks at a press conference and rally in front of the America ChangLe Association highlighting Beijing's transnational repression, in New York City on Feb. 25, 2023. A now-closed overseas Chinese police station is located inside the association building.Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times

A bipartisan group of lawmakers is speaking out against China’s communist regime and its attempt to export ethno-nationalism and totalitarian ideology abroad.

Members of the bipartisan House Select Committee on Strategic Competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) are sounding the alarm on the regime’s attempts to subvert the rules-based international order following their first hearing on Feb. 28.

Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.), who serves on the committee, said that he had previously misunderstood the regime’s expansionist and authoritarian ambitions, and now better understood the threat posed to the international order.

“I originally had a conception of the CCP as ruthless business people who prized stability and economic growth above all else,” Torres told NTD, sister media outlet of The Epoch Times, after the primetime hearing on Tuesday.

“I’ve come to realize that these are genuine idealists who are willing to pursue ethno-nationalism and totalitarianism, even at the expense of their own economy.”

To that end, Torres said that CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping had in some sense done the United States and its allies a favor by laying bare the regime’s ambition to undermine and displace the United States as the world’s leading superpower.

“In some sense, that [idealism] makes them even more dangerous. It means they’re capable of even more aggression,” Torres said.

“So, Xi Jinping has done us a huge favor by revealing the true character of the CCP.”

Torres said that the CCP’s ambitions to displace the United States and reshape the world into a new, authoritarian order with China at its head, was a cause for concern for all Americans. The United States, he said, would have to compete to maintain its freedom and that of its allies and partners.

“We all have to ask ourselves a simple question: What kind of world do we wish to live in?” Torres said.

“Do we wish to live in a fundamentally free world led by the United States? Or do we wish to live in a totalitarian police state led by the Chinese Communist Party? I would argue that we should err on the side of freedom.”

Chairman Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.) speaks during the first hearing on national security and Chinese threats to America held by the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party on Capitol Hill in Washington on Feb. 28, 2023. Roberto Schmidt/AFP via Getty Images

CCP Exporting Totalitarianism

Select Committee Chair Mike Gallagher (R-Wisc.) spoke similarly, adding that the CCP was a much more potent threat than the Soviet Union had been during the first Cold War. Unlike the USSR, Gallagher said, the CCP had the benefit of learning from the Soviets’ downfall.

“I do think [the CCP] is a far more complex and formidable threat than the Soviet Union was,” Gallagher told NTD.

“Xi Jinping has studied the demise of the Soviet Union and he is attempting to learn the lessons from that failure so that he doesn’t repeat those lessons.”

Gallagher’s comments echoed those previously made by billionaire investor and conservative donor Peter Thiel, who previously said that the CCP had learned the opposite lessons of the West regarding the end of the Cold War and had consciously chosen to pursue totalitarianism rather than liberalism.

“It was not only in the West that we learned lessons from [the fall of the Berlin Wall], the Chinese communists also paid very careful attention to it,” Thiel said during a 2020 interview with the Hoover Institution.

“They learned that ... you had to get rid of the Marxism without getting rid of the Leninism, and they learned somehow the very opposite lessons of that fateful year 1989.”

Gallagher said that the technological basis of the CCP’s repressive surveillance apparatus and the regime’s business ties with the West meant that the threat was much closer to home than many Americans understood.

The strategic competition and potential conflict with communist China, he said, was not one that could be confined to Chinese shores.

“It is not a distant ‘over there’ threat. It’s a ‘right here at home’ threat,” Gallagher said. “Take the Chinese spy balloon, the CCP police stations on American soil, Chinese students being harassed and physically assaulted on American campuses.”

“It’s my belief that what happens inside China’s borders, what happens even in Xinjiang, won’t stay there now that they’re perfecting a model of total techno-totalitarian control that they want to export around the world.”