New House committee focuses on China threat
Mike Brest
Video Embed
Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI) has been studying strategic threats to the United States since he joined the House six years ago. When it comes to China, his outlook is grim.
Gallagher, previously an active-duty Marine Corps intelligence officer for seven years, including two deployments to Iraq, sees American democracy and the Chinese Communist Party locked in the midst of a cold war. How to emerge victorious in the military, diplomatic, and economic realms will be a focus of a new House panel he’s about to helm.
When House Republicans take control of the House on Jan. 3, after winning a narrow 222-213 majority in the Nov. 8 midterm elections, Gallagher will be chairman of the Select Committee on China. As a select panel, it’s set up to last on a temporary basis, in the upcoming 118th Congress, with majority party members chosen by the House speaker.
Kevin McCarthy, House GOP leader and aspiring speaker, announced on Dec. 8 that Gallagher would lead the new committee. It’s unclear if incoming House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) will place members of his party on the committee.
Gallagher told the Washington Examiner that he hopes and believes the committee’s work will be bipartisan.
Multiple Democrats have “reached out to me saying they want to be involved,” said Gallagher, who won his northeast Wisconsin House seat in 2016.
To Gallagher, top threats posed to the U.S. by the Chinese government include a possible invasion of Taiwan, a heavy buyer of American defense technology and a leading chipmaker for global markets. Beijing regards Taiwan as a renegade province and a piece of unfinished business after the communists seized power in 1949 on the mainland amid a long-running civil war.
There’s also U.S. dependence on China for various goods, including pharmaceuticals and critical technology. Each is an issue Gallagher has been warning about for years.
YEAR IN REVIEW: THE PENTAGON’S 2022 DEFINED BY HELPING UKRAINE IN WAR WITH RUSSIA
“It’s our working hypothesis that we cannot deter the CCP if we’re dependent upon the CCP,” Gallagher said. “If we conceive of our competition with the CCP as a long-term marathon or, as I say, a new Cold War, which just implies a long-term competition in multiple domains. It’s as if to qualify for a marathon, you have to win a short-term sprint. Our short-term sprint is over the next five years, [and the] most critical part of that sprint is Taiwan.”
The CCP views Taiwan as a part of its country, though the island of roughly 24 million people is self-governing and has claimed its independence. The U.S. has recognized China’s claim to Taiwan but does not support any unilateral change in the status. Meanwhile, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army has demonstrated increasingly aggressive military maneuvers, including sending fighter planes and navy vessels toward the island.
In mid-November, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Mark Milley called Chinese leader Xi Jinping a “rational actor” and said he likely views invading Taiwan right now as “an excessive amount of risk,” though Secretary of State Antony Blinken said a month earlier that Xi had made a “fundamental decision” that the status quo of Taiwan’s self-governance was “no longer acceptable.” Blinken added at the time that the Chinese were “determined to pursue reunification on a much faster timeline” than previous estimations.
The Department of Defense released its much-anticipated National Defense Strategy this fall, identifying the CCP as posing the “most comprehensive and serious challenge to U.S. national security.” While the Pentagon’s China Military Power Report revealed that China’s operational nuclear warheads stockpile has likely surpassed 400 and could exceed 1,500 by 2035 at its current pace.
The China select committee will hold hearings about a variety of subjects over the first year, Gallagher said. He expects to work closely with other committee leaders, including the House Armed Services and Foreign Affairs committees, to conduct those hearings and to take on relevant aspects that the permanent House panels may not be able to do on their own.
Grabbing the public’s attention on dense, though crucially important, subjects like threats from China is a challenge, Gallagher acknowledged.
“My own parents and family don’t even watch when I’m talking during the hearing,” said Gallagher, a onetime Senate Foreign Relations Committee staffer.
“We really, I think, want to get creative with hearings and do a lot of field hearings,” Gallagher added, discussing the possibility of holding hearings outside of Washington, D.C., where a specific issue would be most relevant. “So we want to get out outside the Beltway as much as possible, do a series of field hearings with the goal of enhancing awareness of the threat posed by the CCP among average Americans.”
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
Maseh Zarif, director of congressional relations at FDD Action, a nonprofit and nonpartisan policy advocacy organization that works with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, believes Gallagher was a great selection to lead the committee. Its work will follow the 2020 China Task Force, which Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX), the incoming chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, led when Republicans were in the minority.
“I couldn’t think of a member who’s better positioned to take on this type of role. They’re sort of the obvious points [about] him, with his expertise and his military background as a Marine intel officer. But then he’s also got a couple of intangibles that I think are really critical here. I think one is temperament and his willingness I think he discusses publicly to try to work to forge bipartisan consensus on a lot of these issues,” Zarif told the Washington Examiner.
“He’s one of the members that has a very clear-eyed view of the entire scope of the Chinese Communist Party-led China threat. He’s not just sort of focused on the military piece,” Zarif added. “He’s not just focused on the trade and finance space, but he sort of sees all of it. He sees how it affects Americans here at home in our own communities. And he also understands, obviously, the nature of the global challenge that China poses.”
Gallagher said he believes there is “a growing recognition” among the public about the threats posed by the CCP, though many view it as “a distant threat” and “not a clear and present danger.”
Gallagher is a graduate of Princeton University. The rabid Green Bay Packers fan earned a Ph.D. from Georgetown University in government and international relations, among other academic credentials.