OPINION:
Why are some Republicans so consistently weak on the slaving, genocidal regime in China?
They have been unable or unwilling to prevent American capital from flowing into China, have failed to control the export of advanced technology to China, and can’t even manage to ban TikTok, the lowest of the low-hanging fruit.
Why not?
Some of the problem seems to be that members of Congress are more interested in caressing the problem than doing something about it.
For example, when Rep. Andy Barr, Kentucky Republican, introduced legislation this year that would have banned U.S. investment in companies that support China’s military, it was inexplicably left behind in committee while House Banking Chairman Patrick McHenry shipped more than a dozen mostly meaningless messaging bills to the House floor.
Perhaps not coincidentally, Mr. McHenry, North Carolina Republican, recently sent a letter to the National Defense Authorization Act conferees to throw sand in the gears of their attempts to restrict American investment in companies involved with the Chinese military.
For those keeping score, about $1 trillion of American investment has vanished into the Chinese economy in the last half decade, and we haven’t bothered to track any of it.
The importance of American capital goes well beyond the cash involved. Recipients of such investment harvest intangible benefits that often accompany such investments, including enhanced standing and prominence, managerial assistance, investment and talent networks, market access, and enhanced access to further financing.
In other words, access to our capital markets helps legitimize and strengthen the communist regime in Beijing, the same regime that the Biden administration and the Trump administration before that have identified as genocidal and built on slavery. Investing in China makes this adversary stronger and us — at best — morally compromised and almost certainly economically weaker.
The simple and correct answer is to outlaw all U.S. investment in China and require current investments to be unwound within a few years.
In the letter to the NDAA conferees, Mr. McHenry also suggested that we know how to manage export controls. The Department of Commerce has a lot of experience with export controls. But while Commerce talks a good game, it tends to approve licenses to allow most exports.
For example, the chipmakers Samsung, TSMC and SK Hynix were recently granted indefinite license renewals to continue to sell chips freely, allowing them to simply ignore the administration’s export control regime announced in October 2022. These licenses ensure that the export control regime — so often lauded by Republicans — remains mostly toothless.
Part of the problem may be the lobbyists whom the Republicans abide.
The House version of the NDAA would, among other things, bar the government from continuing to do business with genomics companies with ties to China. It is a reasonable thing to preclude. We shouldn’t be paying our adversaries to take the high ground in a cutting-edge technology sector.
You will be shocked to learn that the Chinese companies involved have hired a batch of lobbyists, including firms with deep Republican ties. The Vogel Group, Steptoe and Johnson, and FGS Global — firms with lots of Republicans in their senior ranks — are all working for interests in China.
It’s not just in Washington.
Gotion is a battery company with, well, let’s call them links to the communist regime in China — its parent company is committed to “carry out Party activities” — that plans to open plants in Illinois and Michigan and take advantage of tax credits created in the Inflation Reduction Act (thank you, Sen. Joe Manchin III).
It turns out that not all local residents are wild about that. A few days ago, the people in the Michigan township where Gotion plans to open a manufacturing plant recalled five officials who approved tax breaks for the project.
Not coincidentally, as reported in Politico, Gotion has hired Mercury Public Affairs — another firm littered with Republicans — as well as our friends at the Vogel Group.
Interestingly, neither firm registered the work under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, although a Michigan law firm that started work earlier this year did just that. It seems likely that someone is registered under the wrong regime.
The truth is that despite all their talk, congressional Republicans have yet to take any action whatsoever against China. They have yet to manage so much as a vote on banning TikTok — despite widespread acknowledgment that is it the most successful psychological operation ever conducted on a nation’s population.
Either China is an adversary or it is not. It’s time for the Republicans — and those from whom they take cash — to be clear on that question.
• Michael McKenna is a contributing editor at The Washington Times and was previously a deputy assistant to the president for legislative affairs.
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