Time to end business as usual with China

OPINION:

Joe Biden’s record over the last half century proves one thing — he will never get serious about China. As a result, America’s energy security and national security are threatened.

In February we learned that U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) experts determined a Chinese lab leak was the likely origin of COVID. It was later revealed that the Federal Bureau of Investigation had come to the same conclusion.

Just last month, the president reluctantly signed bipartisan legislation to declassify as much intelligence as possible about the origins of COVID. The administration needs to come clean with the American people about what it knows.

For decades, China has menaced its neighbors and threatened U.S. interests. The news that a lab leak there may have led to the death of a million Americans is deeply troubling. The fact that the Biden administration concealed this from the American people is reprehensible. The president cannot conceal nor ignore the implications of his administration’s findings.

It is increasingly clear the Chinese Communist Party has brazenly lied to the world to cover up its guilt. China’s treachery worsened and prolonged the global pandemic it created. Even today, China continues to lie about COVID’s origins.

The question we must ask now is: What should we do about it?

It’s a question the administration does not want to think about, much less answer. Doing something might interfere with the only thing this administration seems to care about—climate change. Everything else is secondary. The president’s “whole-of-government” assault on American energy production is a self-destructive consequence of this worldview.

To the administration, China is considered an essential partner in the global effort to address climate change. China, of course, is the world’s largest carbon emitter. Joe Biden will not allow a threat to our national security to spoil the fiction that China is working with us.

China is playing the Biden administration for suckers. When a reporter confronted U.S. Climate Czar John Kerry about China’s use of forced labor to manufacture solar panels, the former Secretary of State refused to condemn it. He meekly said, “That’s not my lane here.”

That was not an aberration. When Russia invaded Ukraine, Kerry voiced greater concern about the war’s impacts on climate change than he did for the people of Ukraine.

The Biden administration’s blind pursuit of any cooperation with China—even at the expense of national security—is sadly predictable.

This administration should have learned by now that China is not in the business of cooperation. It is in the business of global domination. America can no longer afford a president and an administration that uses climate change as a pretext for appeasement.

China must be made to pay a steep price for its COVID lies.

We can begin by cutting off taxpayer dollars to Chinese companies. Incredible as it may seem, DOE is awarding federal dollars to companies linked to Beijing. Why would we even think about sending one cent to companies controlled by China?

A DOE official recently testified that Chinese companies are in line for grants because that is where the majority of manufacturing and intellectual property is. Ironically, Vice President Biden led a 2009 government spending spree to develop green industries here. Now President Biden wants to subsidize Chinese companies.

After the devastating report from her own department, the Secretary of Energy should make clear that no DOE money will be awarded to any entity connected with China. I will be pressing Energy Secretary Granholm to address these concerns when she appears before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee tomorrow.

DOE’s National Labs host thousands of Chinese foreign nationals. As of 2021, an estimated 4,000 non-resident Chinese foreign nationals work within America’s national laboratory system. We must ensure that we are not training the technology workers of our main adversary. Further, we must recognize that the labs are vulnerable to Chinese theft of American intellectual property. China must not be able to profit from America’s national labs, period.

China continues to take advantage of international institutions like the World Bank and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.

China is the world’s second-largest economy. Yet, China still gets treated like a developing country, making it eligible for funding and grants supported by U.S. taxpayers.

We should also block senior U.S. national security officials from going to work for China. I have introduced legislation to stop all three of these scandalous practices.

This should be just the beginning. We need a thorough “whole-of-government” strategic re-examination of our entire relationship with China. We cannot afford to continue business as usual.

China must be held accountable. We owe that to the Americans who have suffered and died because of China’s corrupt misconduct.

• U.S. Senator John Barrasso, Wyoming Republican, is the Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. He also serves in Senate Republican leadership as Chairman of the Senate Republican Conference. During his 24 years as an orthopedic surgeon, he served as President of the Wyoming Medical Society and was named Wyoming Physician of the Year.