The U.S. government is “dangerously behind” in countering Beijing’s political warfare, the House Oversight Committee said on Thursday.
The committee said U.S. decision-makers have to “speak candidly about CCP infiltration,” called for more targeted measures that are specific to China, and criticized the Biden administration, saying it lacks a “whole-of-government approach” to counter the threat.
The Epoch Times has reached out to the White House for comment.
After surveying 25 federal agencies, “what we found was there is no plan,” committee chair James Comer (R-Ky.) told NTD, a sister outlet of The Epoch Times.
“Not only that, there’s not even a process in place to educate the government employees and the heads of each division and each cabinet exactly what to look for and how to know when China is behaving badly.”
According to the report, most federal agencies don’t have a cohesive strategy to “identify, counter, and deter CCP political warfare—too often because CCP influence operations have interfered with the judgment, discretion, and fulfillment of duties by federal agencies themselves.”
Citing examples in some agencies, the report said the government has relied on China to buy U.S. Treasury bills, failed to adequately monitor the CCP’s takeover of American farmland near U.S. military bases, failed to inform and educate Americans of the risks associated with Chinese products, and is not studying, addressing, or warning the public about the CCP’s “elite capture” strategy targeting state and local governments and business leaders.
Out of 25 agencies, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) was the only one that had “transparently acknowledged” the CCP’s infiltration campaigns, has a strategy to combat on of them—namely the CCP’s role in the fentanyl crisis—and communicated with the American people about it, the report said.
China has been one of the primary sources of fentanyl and fentanyl-related drugs—the leading cause of overdose deaths in the United States.
Chinese transnational criminal organizations (TCOs) are increasingly working with Mexican cartels to ship fentanyl precursors to Mexico, where they are made into fentanyl products and then smuggled into the United States. Fentanyl from China is also directly shipped to the United States in small packages.
“The DEA confirmed Chinese TCO leaders hold government positions in the CCP and indicated that Chinese TCOs are dedicated to the CCP,” the Oversight Committee report said.
However, the committee added that the DEA’s effort “can only be so successful” without a cross-government consensus and cohesive approach to “CCP unrestricted warfare and its relationship with Chinese TCOs.”
Unrestricted warfare, a term coined by two Chinese colonels in 1999, describes confrontations by any lethal or non-lethal means including and not limited to terrorism, economic coercion, misinformation, and propaganda.
Characterizing the Chinese regime, the report called it “a totalitarian force that enslaves its own people; surveils and harasses critics of the Party and people of Chinese descent around the world; poisons tens of thousands of Americans every year with fentanyl; and actively seeks to destroy America.”
The regime “seeks the downfall of the United States because the CCP views the American way of life as a threat” to its authoritarian reign, the report said.
According to Comer, there is a growing bipartisan consensus on this view.
Former President Donald Trump identified China as a “strategic competitor,” and the Biden administration said in 2022 that the Chinese regime “harbors the intention and, increasingly, the capacity to reshape the international order” for its own benefit.
While differences remain in the two parties’ approaches such as how much the United States should separate its economy from China, and the rhetoric about China and the CCP, they largely agree on controlling strategic goods and technologies, investing in innovation, re-shoring supply chains, and combating Beijing’s unfair trade practices.
In its report, the Oversight Committee said the United States is facing “a new cold war,” and is in a more vulnerable situation than it was during the last cold war against the Soviet Union.
“Unlike the first Cold War, the adversary is already within, having entrenched itself within U.S. borders, institutions, businesses, universities, and cultural centers by capturing elites in influential circles,” the report reads.
The committee said more candid discussion about the CCP’s infiltration operations can “turn the tide in America’s favor.”
It’s one of four components crucial for a successful government-wide strategy to tackle the CCP’s political warfare, the committee said.
The other components include replacing country-agnostic measures with a targeted approach, deepening the knowledge required to win against unrestricted warfare, and engaging the American people about the CCP threat and providing resources when appropriate that thwart CCP ambitions.
The Chinese embassy didn’t respond to The Epoch Times’ request for comment by publishing time.
