House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy announced the creation of the China Select Committee on December 8, 2022 and named Representative Mike Gallagher to lead this new body which seeks to focus on, and push back against, threats posed by the Chinese Communist Party to the US.
“The Chinese Communist Party is the greatest geopolitical threat of our lifetime,” McCarthy said. “We need a whole-of-government approach that will build on the efforts of the Republican-led China Task Force and ensure America is prepared to tackle the economic and security challenges posed by the CCP.”
Gallagher, a China hawk from Wisconsin, is a member of the House Intelligence and Armed Services committees. “We need to reduce our economic dependency on China, and we need to make sure that we are surging hard power west of the International Dateline in defending Taiwan in particular. We also need to understand how China is trying to corrupt and subvert our domestic institutions and make sure that they are not allowed to do that going forward. So this is an important effort…The Chinese Communist Party is our foremost threat in the world today,” he said.
The congressman wants the committee to serve a “public diplomacy function,” and promised “a series of hearings that get people to understand the nature of what we’re dealing with in the Chinese Communist Party and the stakes.” The committee will aggressively advocate for security aid to Taiwan, for instance, he said. Gallagher wants the committee to help coordinate legislation related to China and oversight of the Biden administration’s policies toward the country. He plans to scrutinize issues like China’s United Front Work Department and its overseas influence operations.
