Editor’s note for February 27, 2023

My thoughts today:

In Washington, D.C., tomorrow evening at 7 p.m., the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party will convene for its first session, titled “The Chinese Communist Party’s Threat to America.” The Committee has 11 Democratic Party members and 13 Republicans. As we’ve often noted, the need to “get tough on China” is literally the only thing there is bipartisan support for in Washington.

There will be four “witnesses,” whose resumés give a good idea of what they will talk about, which will drive some of the next phase of legislator action (and it’s clear that there will be more legislator action):

Scott Paul, president of the Alliance for American Manufacturing, a lobbying organization formed as a partnership between “leading manufacturers and the United Steelworkers union.”

From the organization’s website and podcast, which Paul himself hosts, it is clear his focus is on reshoring manufacturing to the U.S., and much of that, of course, means pulling supply chains out of China. Recent podcast episodes include:

• Can America make its own medicine again?
• Is U.S. Trade policy enabling fast fashion behemoth Shein’s shadowy supply chain?

Matthew Pottinger was U.S. deputy national security adviser in the Trump administration, who is often credited with shaping the former president’s China policies and can be fairly described as unrelentingly hawkish on China.

Pottinger reported from China for Reuters and the Wall Street Journal between 1998 and 2005, before joining the Marines, where he did intelligence work in Iraq and Afghanistan. Earlier this month, he co-wrote an opinion piece for Wall Street Journal arguing that Congress should establish a bipartisan national commission of inquiry into the pandemic’s origins.

H.R. McMaster is a retired United States Army lieutenant general who was Pottinger’s boss as U.S. national security adviser in the Trump administration from February 2017 to March 2018. He is a board member of Zoom, which has a Chinese-born CEO and operations in China, so he is perhaps not reflexively hostile to business with China.

However, in January 2022, he joined the advisory board of Strider Technologies, which offers threat assessment and intelligence about China. In a February 6 interview with CBS about the spy balloon, he said:

Maybe we should take other actions that are similar to shooting down a balloon, such as not underwriting our own demise with investments in China, and companies that are associated with their military complex, and also it’s really important for us to call out the wide range of behaviors of the Chinese Communist Party, including what they are doing to their own citizens.

Tóng Yì 童屹, described by the Select Committee as a “Chinese human rights advocate,” rose to prominence in the 1990s after she worked for Democracy Wall dissident Wèi Jīngshēng 魏京生, who himself is also now living in the U.S. Here is a 1997 interview she did with Charlie Rose; it’s an interesting interview, revealing how much has changed but in other ways how little has changed in China’s relationship with America.