On an overcast day in late October, I headed up to Capitol Hill to report on what might be the last pocket of functioning governance in Congress: the House of Representatives’ China Committee.
On an overcast day in late October, I headed up to Capitol Hill to report on what might be the last pocket of functioning governance in Congress: the House of Representatives’ China Committee.
Reps. Mike Gallagher, a Republican, and Raja Krishnamoorthi, a Democrat, are the chair and ranking member of what is basically the hottest ticket in Washington. The Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, which is its full name, was the brainchild of lawmakers on both sides of the aisle and is focused exclusively on how to map out a new era of U.S. competition with China. It’s a task almost everyone in Washington is on board with, which has made at least some U.S. allies and partners around the world very uneasy, fearful of being dragged into a Cold War 2.0.
Some American experts and officials bristle at the new Cold War moniker; others begrudgingly accept it. But whatever you call it, the new era of U.S. competition with China represents the most significant strategic shift in American foreign policy in decades. Congress wants to carve out its role in the action, and on that front Gallagher and Krishnamoorthi are in the driver’s seat.
I met the two lawmakers in the Krishnamoorthi’s office in the Rayburn House Office Building. Krishnamoorthi’s office is adorned with paraphernalia, including flags and local snacks from his home district in the Chicago suburbs, the Illinois 8th. Gallagher is a fellow Midwesterner and represents Wisconsin’s 8th district.
The meeting, which lasted about 40 minutes, came after former Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy was ousted from his job following a campaign by a small faction from his own party. The one part of the federal government that the GOP controls was turned into a rudderless ship at a time of major national security crises and questions about how the U.S. Congress would dole out funds to address them. Finally, on Oct. 25, Republicans elected Louisiana Republican Mike Johnson to be new House speaker. The questions on national security funding—for Ukraine’s war against Russia, for Israel’s war in Gaza, for Taiwan, and for U.S. southern border security—have yet to be resolved a month later.
By contrast, things have been humming along for the House China Committee in a relatively drama-free fashion. As Gallagher put it, “We may be the only thing that’s still functioning, actually, in Congress.”
Reps. Mike Gallagher and Raja Krishnamoorthi during a meeting of the Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party in the Rayburn Building in WAshington on May 24.Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call via Getty Images
Since the committee was first formed in January—it was one of the first votes of the current Congressional session—Gallagher and Krishnamoorthi have held numerous high-profile hearings, issued a slew of reports, toured the country, and sent a flurry of letters to private companies and top Biden administration officials for their work. “I think I’m starting to lose track of our letters,” Krishnamoorthi said.
“Too much bipartisanship,” Gallagher quipped.
“Too much bipartisanship … where’s Jim Jordan when we need him?” Krishnamoorthi shot back. (Jordan, an Ohio congressman and Trump-aligned Republican firebrand, lost a vote to become House speaker after McCarthy’s departure, and then another, and then another, before admitting defeat and backing out of the race.)
The House China Committee has no lawmaking authority, but it can conduct investigations and lengthy research projects, issue subpoenas, issue policy recommendations, and seed all of its work into other House committees with authority over major budget and legislative issues, such as the House Armed Services Committee, Ways and Means Committee, or Finance Committee.
In short, this is the beating heart of Congress’s policy agenda on China, giving Gallagher and Krishnamoorthi outsized voices on what most in Washington consider the new, defining U.S. foreign-policy challenge. What the committee sets its sights on next is a good indication of where U.S. policy will go.
So far, that has included an investigation into how fashion companies are profiting from forced labor in China; subpoenaing a Chinese-owned lab in California; facilitating technocratic legislation to ease tax barriers for U.S. companies looking to do business in Taiwan; issuing a report on boosting U.S. military support for Taiwan; and holding high-profile hearings, which got prime-time TV treatment, on how the United States should compete with China and “selectively decouple” its economy from China’s in the name of national security. The committee even did a mini war game, organized by a Washington-based think tank, simulating a Chinese invasion of Taiwan to game out a U.S. response.
The committee’s work coincided with a major summit between U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in San Francisco earlier this month, where the two leaders vowed to dial back tensions in U.S.-China relations. Gallagher and Krishnamoorthi, of course, did joint media hits on the summit—both lambasting U.S. companies for feting Xi with a private (and pricey) gala dinner and lauding the administration for restarting military-to-military channels of communication with the Chinese armed forces.
There are three broad factors that make the House China Committee a bastion of bipartisanship and productivity. The first is the scale of the threat from China, at least in the sense of how 95 percent of Washington sees it—something most Republicans and Democrats, if not the rest of the world, agree on.
The second is the fact that both Gallagher and Krishnamoorthi are from politically safe districts and are genuine policy wonks, as described by themselves as well as numerous other U.S. lawmakers, Congressional aides, and officials interviewed for this story. Both are seasoned members of the House Intelligence Committee. (Gallagher, a Marine Corps veteran, also earned his PhD in international relations from Georgetown).
Without uphill reelection battles, both say the House China Committee is a top priority in their jobs. “I devote my most productive hours such as they exist to this,” Gallagher said. “I don’t have to worry about the political side of things per se. So, it frees up time to focus on policy.”
Krishnamoorthi agreed, saying he spends a lot of time on the committee’s work. “I don’t have a life,” he said.
The third factor is that the two congressmen actually seem to get along. (To borrow a phrase from conservative Cold Warrior icon Ronald Reagan, I trusted but verified by also confirming this with multiple other lawmakers and Congressional aides).
There is a small group of voices who view that very bipartisanship with wariness—worried that the same Washington groupthink that led to major foreign-policy disasters such as the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan could push the United States to stumble into an open conflict with China.
“This also should not be a committee about winning a ‘new Cold War’ as the Chair-Designate of the Committee has previously stated,” 23 progressive Democratic lawmakers wrote back in January in an open letter explaining their opposition to the committee’s creation. “America can and must work towards our economic and strategic competitiveness goals without ‘a new Cold War.’”
Some—but not all—U.S. allies have echoed similar concerns. “The worse thing would be to think that we Europeans must become followers on this topic and take our cue from the U.S. agenda and a Chinese overreaction,” French President Emmanuel Macron said while heading back from a visit to China in April.
Advocates of the hawkish consensus in Washington say they have a compelling counterargument to naysayers, which effectively boils down to this: China started it. They point to how Xi has consolidated authoritarian control, orchestrated what the United States considers to be a genocide against ethnic Uyghurs in Western China, greatly expanded military spending, ramped up pressure on Taiwan in a way that has fueled fears of a Chinese military invasion of the island to reconquer it in the future, and taken a more assertive and muscular approach to foreign affairs with so-called wolf warrior diplomacy. (Indeed, even among the relatively feel-good vibes at Biden and Xi’s meeting in San Francisco, Xi doubled down on plans for a Chinese “reunification” with Taiwan. Xi said he preferred to do so peacefully but nonetheless laid out conditions where China would use force, a senior U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity about the meeting, told reporters.)
And the House China Committee is focused on how to counter Beijing through that framing. “We may call this a ‘strategic competition,’ but this is not a polite tennis match,” Gallagher said during the committee’s first hearing in February. “This is an existential struggle over what life will look like in the 21st century—and the most fundamental freedoms are at stake.”
During our interview, Gallagher and Krishnamoorthi repeatedly riffed off each other, offering a glimpse into how the committee could generate new legislation.
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Here’s one example. Krishnamoorthi casually brought up an issue he wanted to tackle: streamlining the various (and sometimes discordant) sanctions lists the U.S. government maintains—from specially designated nationals (SDN) lists to entities named on the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act—into a master list. There may be some foreign companies involved in nefarious activities named on one sanctions list but not another, or companies not named in the Treasury Department’s SDN list but named in the Commerce Department’s Denied Persons List. In short, it can be really confusing for businesses that don’t have massive compliance departments to keep up and make sure they’re staying on the right side of U.S. sanctions policy.
“I was going to propose, as part of our legislation, that we try to harmonize these lists,” Krishnamoorthi said. Gallagher nodded, agreeing: “I’m totally on board with that conception. … I think if you’re playing the game of ‘keep adding names to different lists,’ it’s a losing game. It’s like endless Whac-A-Mole.”
Meanwhile, the oversight and investigations side of the committee has fired some shots across the bow at massive U.S. investment firms involved in China, a signal that the U.S. government will investigate and could hold accountable U.S. companies that bankroll China’s advancements in artificial intelligence and dual-use technology that could benefit its military, as well as Beijing’s overall quest for technological supremacy.
In October, the committee sent a letter to Silicon Valley’s premiere venture capital firm, Sequoia Capital, enquiring about just that. Gallagher and Krishnamoorthi maintain that businesses across different industries are yearning for stability in how the United States regulates business with China.
“If you’ve received one of our letters, you’re not thrilled,” Gallagher said. “I know that they’re not. But like, if you’re a major asset manager on Wall Street or a big [venture capital firm] like Sequoia, I actually think it’s better if Congress arrives at a legislative solution. Because at least that will provide more certainty than if we’re just going to ping pong back and forth between different executive orders. Right?”
Krishnamoorthi chimed in: “What we heard over and over again on Wall Street is, ‘Okay. Just tell us what you want to do, and we will then abide by those rules. We’re in the business of making money, but we don’t want to violate laws.’” He added a caveat: “Now, the part of me that is cynical is, like, they tell me and Mike that; and then they go to somebody else and they’re like, ‘Don’t let that become law. Don’t let that piece of legislation that Gallagher wants become the law.’ And so, they’re trying to play it on both sides.”
Gallagher hopes for the best. “I’ve been told that there are some people on Wall Street that have changed their behavior just because of the issues we’ve raised,” he said. “I can’t prove it, but … that’s the story I tell myself before I go to bed at night.”
In addition to their flurry of work in Washington, Gallagher and Krishnamoorthi have also taken the House China Committee show on the road, from Wall Street to Middle America. The themes of the trips have been pretty straightforward; pretty much every press release has had “China” and “threat” somewhere in the title. With manufacturers in Wisconsin, they discussed how China poses threats to American manufacturing with unfair trade practices and theft of intellectual property. With farmers in Iowa, they discussed China’s threat to farmers with the theft of agricultural technologies. And in New York City, during meetings with Wall Street executives, they talked about China’s “threat to U.S. financial stability.”
One trip that’s not yet on their agenda? Going to China.
Gallagher and Krishnamoorthi said Chinese officials have approached the committee to inquire about a potential trip for the lawmakers. But the timing and conditions for the trip have to be right. “I don’t want us to go and just be used as a photo prop by the [Chinese Communist Party] and then nothing else,” Krishnamoorthi said. “We’re not able to have substantive conversations.
“I get it, I mean, it’s really important that we have that dialogue,” he said. “[But] it has to be in the right circumstances.” Also, the committee doesn’t want to go to China before it sees and understands the results of Taiwan’s upcoming elections, scheduled for January 2024, Krishnamoorthi noted.
Gallagher and Krishnamoorthi are, however, keenly interested in an official committee visit to India. (The day I met them, they were actually supposed to be in India with McCarthy as House speaker, but the trip got scrapped when McCarthy got kicked out of the job.) “I still desperately want to go to India,” Gallagher said. Many U.S. policymakers and lawmakers view U.S. ties with India as a strategic priority to balance against China, in spite of the nonaligned strains embedded in India’s foreign policy DNA.
All the while, they say they have to contend with the fact that they are (probably) being spied on by China. “I work based off that assumption,” Gallagher said. “Given that most of what we do is unclassified, there’s no perfect defense against it.”
Recently, U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, as well as other State Department officials, were targeted by Chinese state hackers, as the Wall Street Journal reported in July. That was the latest in a series of public revelations about the scale of Chinese state-backed hacking campaigns targeting the U.S. national security establishment.
Krishnamoorthi said he and Gallagher had both received briefings on the matter, but he declined to give more specifics. “We made sure our [committee] members are aware, and we know we’re being monitored,” he said.
Other priorities for the House China Committee include beefing up U.S. defense ties with Taiwan, something Gallagher in particular has been outspoken on. Though the United States, like most other countries around the world, adheres to the “One China” policy and only formally recognizes Beijing, it has sought to strengthen informal ties and direct military cooperation with Taiwan. China, meanwhile, has made reconquering Taiwan (whether through military force or other means) a top strategic priority, setting up a major geopolitical showdown between the two global superpowers over the small self-governed island democracy.
In May, the committee issued a report with 10 policy recommendations for “preserving peace and stability” in the Taiwan Strait, from boosting the number of U.S. long-range missiles and unmanned vehicles in the Indo-Pacific to expediting U.S. weapons sales to Taiwan. Seven of the 10 proposals outlined in the report have been worked into this year’s National Defense Authorization Act, Gallagher noted. The act, which is the House’s major defense policy bill, is expected to be passed before the end of the year.
The committee is also looking at legislating outbound investments—screening U.S. investments overseas into industries pertaining to national security—and closing a loophole in U.S. trade law that enables shipments of goods into the United States to avoid U.S. customs screenings if they value under $800. (It is this loophole, the committee alleges, that allows fashion companies involved in China to continue relying on forced labor as they ship shoes and clothing to the United States.)
“At the end of the day, it’s just an academic exercise if our committee comes out with report recommendations that don’t make it into law,” Krishnamoorthi said.
Meanwhile, “I think we’ve converted some skeptics,” Gallagher said of the committee. “But we’ve still got a lot of work to do.”
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