Republicans’ China Task Force Claims CCP Is ‘Most Dangerous Adversary in Our History’

Sept. 30, 2020 (EIRNS)—The China Task Force, a 15-member Republican entity, which is an adjunct of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, today released a sweeping report insisting that the United States must “act decisively” with its allies to combat China’s leadership actions. The “China Task Force Report” is the culmination of a months-long probe into the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and follows by a week the 141-page report issued by the Foreign Affairs Committee which blamed China for deliberately spreading the coronavirus pandemic and the related economic devastation, and attacked the World Health Organization (WHO) for colluding with and “appeasing” the CCP.

According to the Washington Examiner, this latest report demands that fighting China’s influence must be the “organizing principle” for policies in the U.S. and its allies. Task Force member Rep. Michael Waltz (R-FL) warned that China for some time “has been in a Cold War with us and we’re just now slowly waking up to it.” It is, he went on, “the most dangerous adversary we’ve ever faced in our history,” because of the size of its economy and the fact that it’s “stealing its way to the top technologically.”

This morning, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), and Task Force chairman Michael McCaul (R-TX), explained to Fox News’s Maria Bartiromo that the report is a blueprint for bipartisan action that both the Congress and the Trump Administration can take to confront the “Chinese threat.” Every department of government needs to toughen up, they insisted, to eliminate weaknesses “that China has taken advantage of,” and thus put an end to a “failed engagement strategy.” Among its 430 policy recommendations, the Task Force calls for securing all supply chains, not just medical ones, allowing the Defense Department to fund experimentation in emerging technologies to modernize the U.S. military more quickly, and require the Treasury Department to sanction China. Aside from accusing China of “rampant environmental destruction” worldwide, and “perpetuating global climate change,” the report also calls for the U.S. to secure a bilateral free trade agreement with Taiwan, to require heightened scrutiny of Chinese investment in U.S. companies, and to cut off material support for CCP military-industrial base companies, Fox News reported. There is a touch of irony in the fact that the report concludes that the U.S. must now make the development of nuclear energy a major priority, to combat China’s alleged global environmental destruction.