House Democrats, Republicans Laud New Committee to Counter CCP Influence

Early morning fog envelopes the U.S. Capitol dome behind the U.S. House of Representatives in Washington on Nov. 4, 2022. Samuel Corum/Getty Images

Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle are celebrating the decision of the House of Representatives to establish a new select committee to investigate China’s communist regime and its efforts to undermine and displace the United States.

The House voted to create the Select Committee on Strategic Competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) early in the afternoon on Jan. 10.

The 16-person bipartisan committee to investigate the CCP’s malign influence in the United States and elsewhere received widespread support from both parties for its comprehensive scope and clarity in singling out the CCP as the nation’s greatest threat.

“It’s a comprehensive problem, and it’s going to require a comprehensive set of policy changes to prevail in this generational competition with the Chinese Communist Party,” Rep. Andy Barr (R-Ky.) told NTD, a sister media outlet of The Epoch Times.

“The threat is real in both the economic and the military space, so we need a multidisciplinary and cross-jurisdictional select committee that brings to bear the expertise from across the Congress on both sides of the aisle.”

CCP Aggression ‘An American Issue’

Barr said the committee was a good start to turning the tide against an onslaught of malign efforts by the CCP. Moreover, he said, the committee’s creation had done an exemplary job of clarifying that the threat posed to the United States is by the CCP and not the Chinese people, who are so often the most maligned by the CCP.

“Our focus on securing the international order ... is not an indictment of Chinese history, of the Chinese people, or of the wonderful relationship that the United States has with the Chinese diaspora and the Chinese people,” Barr said.

“I believe that there is a strong commitment to the Democratic international rules-based order in the United States, in both parties, versus the authoritarian model of the Chinese Communist Party,” he also said. “The way forward for global peace and security is the Western model.”

Others, like Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), considered the committee’s greatest strength to be its capacity to encourage vital manufacturing efforts away from China and to return to the United States.

“Loss of American jobs [should be the main priority],” Khanna said. “The fact that we have watched silently as factory town after factory town closed [is wrong].

“Steel went to China. Aluminum went to China. Paper went to China. Textiles went to China. That’s wrong. We’ve got to bring that production back.”

Still, more lawmakers consider the CCP’s campaign to undermine and displace the United States as the chief concern, and envisaged the committee as a means of keeping the American ship of state afloat and defeating that effort once and for all.

“Make no mistake, they have a plan to replace us,” said Rep. Darin LaHood (R-Ill.). “And they’re working at doing that every single day when it comes to technology, when it comes to the economy, [and when] it comes to national security.

“The CCP and what they are engaged in, their malign activities, shouldn’t be a Republican or Democrat issue. It should be an American issue. And that’s what this committee will be all about.”