Amid a recent flurry of U.S.-China diplomacy, a leading congressional voice on China policy is warning against concessions to Beijing, saying they simply serve to encourage even more aggressive behavior. Republican Rep. Mike Gallagher, chairman of the House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party, has urged the Biden administration to focus on the defense of Taiwan, trafficking in drug precursors and human rights in meetings this week with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi.
In an interview with VOA’s Mandarin Service, Gallagher said that the most important topic to discuss is cross-strait deterrence. He noted that Chinese President Xi Jinping has repeatedly said that he wants to take Taiwan by force if necessary, and that the U.S. must send a strong message that such aggression will not be tolerated. Gallagher also urged the administration to urge the Chinese Communist Party to take more aggressive action when it comes to cracking down on the production of fentanyl precursors, as fentanyl is flooding across the southern U.S. border and killing tens of thousands of Americans.
Gallagher also warned against deprioritizing the issue of human rights, noting the ongoing genocide in Xinjiang, economic coercion happening globally, and the ongoing suppression of Hong Kongers. He said that the administration needs to raise these issues during the meetings.
When asked if the high-level official communications between the U.S. and China signals a smoother and more pragmatic path for U.S.-China relations, Gallagher said that he does not believe that to be the case. He said that the administration is trying to revive diplomatic and economic engagement in the hope of taking down the temperature, but that the opposite is happening. He noted that the more the U.S. rushes or bends over backwards to sit down at a table with Xi Jinping or other high-level CCP members, the more aggressive the CCP becomes.
Gallagher also noted that the current conflict in Israel and ongoing war in Ukraine should be a wake-up call to the West, as it appears that there is an axis of authoritarian powers that are arrayed against U.S. and allied interests. He said that this should be an opportunity for the U.S. to revitalize and rebuild its defense industrial base, and to learn the lessons of the failure of deterrence in Ukraine and ensure that those failures are not repeated in the Indo-Pacific region. He said that hard power gives the U.S. its best chance of deterring totalitarian aggression, and that if the U.S. does not surge hard power to the Pacific now, before it’s too late, there could be a PLA invasion of Taiwan with the potential to make the ongoing wars in Ukraine and Israel look timid in comparison.
