US Gov't Needs New Agency, Unified Approach to Address China, House Panel Hears
The U.S. should establish “some kind of new unit in our government” to focus on competing with China, a researcher told the House Homeland Security Committee March 5.
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To counter the Soviet Union during the Cold War, the U.S. created several government entities, including the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Council, the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the U.S. Air Force, said Michael Pillsbury, senior fellow for China strategy at the Heritage Foundation. But the U.S. has not taken similar action for China other than President Donald Trump announcing March 4 that he will form a White House office to revitalize the U.S. shipbuilding industry, Pillsbury testified.
“Does the secretary of homeland security need a China unit reporting directly to her, and then what would it look like, how many people?” Pillsbury asked. “This is the kind of thing I’m most worried about. We’re just doing nothing in terms of creating new institutions to deal with China.”
Craig Singleton, China program senior director and senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense and Democracies, told the committee that the U.S. needs to take a “whole of country” approach to achieve changes in China’s behavior.
“Part of that is building out different pillars of economic statecraft -- sanctions, outbound investing screening, sectoral export control bans to prevent the flow of these technologies into China’s military and its defense sector,” Singleton testified.
Singleton said more measures are needed partly to address China’s material support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. “It’s time to impose costs on the Chinese Communist Party for aiding” Russia’s war machine, he said. “They’ve gotten away with far too much for the last four years and I think it’s time to turn the tide.”
Rush Doshi, assistant professor of security studies at Georgetown University's Walsh School of Foreign Service and director of the China Strategy Initiative at the Council on Foreign Relations, cautioned that it could become more difficult to build international support for stronger export controls against China if differences over Ukraine policy drive a “wedge” between the U.S. and its European allies.
“We need the Dutch, the Germans and others to help us keep critical technology out of China,” Doshi testified. “That’s going to get harder and harder if the Europeans go their own way.”
Bill Evanina, founder and chief executive officer of the Evanina Group, recommended that the Treasury Department and other federal agencies create an information-sharing mechanism to help states identify “nefarious” economic investments and land purchases.