Congressional commission indicates armistice 'twixt right and left will forge a united front against China
 Signs of unanimity of America's deeply divided right and left political spheres toward China have again surfaced in the report from US-China Economic and Security Review Commission, an independent agency of the US government.
The commission's members, though independent, are picked by the departed leftist Democrat Congress, though one would hardly know it from the hawkish anti-China tone of its latest report.
It includes scathing criticism of President Xi Jinping's “zero-Covid” policy, saying it had badly weakened China’s economy and led to increased repression of the Chinese people, noted Hong Kong's South China Morning Post.
“Despite the economic damage caused by the lockdowns, the CCP [Chinese Communist Party] remains committed to its zero-Covid policy, demonstrating its ability to maintain political control even in the absence of economic growth,” the report said.
“China’s strict adherence to the zero-Covid policy in 2022 demonstrated the extent to which top-down centralised management has displaced local discretion under Xi.”
The report added that, despite the economic downturn, Beijing “continued its relentless arms build-up” with increased military spending.
It noted that Beijing’s energy strategy – which seeks to reduce the country’s vulnerabilities to maritime energy chokepoints – would intensify US-China technological competition and that China’s activities in cyberspace and outreach to South Asia and Central Asia posed challenges to the US.
Congress should suspend normal trade relations with China if Washington determines Beijing has not complied with the World Trade Organisation's market access agreement it signed decades ago, said the US government’s top advisory panel on China policy.
The annual report had 39 recommendations and covering nearly every aspect of the bilateral relationship, the commission also called on US lawmakers to study the feasibility of blockading Chinese energy imports in the event of a military conflict involving Beijing, particularly those transiting the Strait of Malacca.
And in the latest sign of Washington’s growing alarm that Chinese leader Xi Jinping may attempt to invade Taiwan, the panel urged Congress to put more manpower into preparing for economic punishment and military resistance against Beijing if it were to attack.
“Xi’s personal and strategic ambitions for his and China’s place in history are clearer than they’ve ever been before,” said Alex Wong, the commission’s chairman. “And so is the need for the United States to take resolute steps to preserve and defend our interests and ideals in response.”
The 785-page report comes as tensions between Washington and Beijing flare at their highest level in years, and it reflects the enormous distrust in Washington towards Beijing on essentially every aspect of the relationship – from trade policy to human rights to its sabre-rattling towards Taiwan.
It also comes just one day after US President Joe Biden and President Xi Jinping met face-to-face for the first time since Mr Biden took office in early 2021. The two leaders committed to working together on climate change and agreeing to communicate more, but were otherwise staunchly opposed on almost every issue of consequence.
“We’re not going to be able to work everything out,” President Biden said after a three-hour meeting. “I’m not suggesting this is kumbaya.”
President Xi, who has a precedent-breaking third term as Communist Party leader, has packed his inner circle of advisers with loyalists. “Critical decisions about everything, from education and popular culture to war and peace, now appear to rest in the hands of one man,” said the report.
In particular, it said the US Trade Representative should assess China’s compliance with the “terms and conditions of the 1999 Agreement on Market Access”, which Beijing and Washington signed before China joined the World Trade Organisation.
If that assessment “concludes that China has failed to comply with the provisions agreed to for its accession to the WTO, Congress should consider legislation to immediately suspend China’s Permanent Normal Trade Relations treatment. Following the suspension of PNTR, Congress should assess new conditions for renewal of normal trade relations with China.”
The commission's report devoted a chapter to Hong Kong, highlighting both the city’s deepening subordination to Beijing’s control and its continuing importance as a bridge for China to global financial markets.
“With Beijing’s hand-picked chief executive now at the helm, China firmly controls all branches of Hong Kong’s government, ushering in a new era of total control by mainland authorities,” the report said.
“By overhauling the election process, it created a rubber-stamp parliament full of so-called patriots, and it has also leveraged the new chief executive’s authority to appoint judges.”
The commission urged Congress to eliminate diplomatic privileges for the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Offices operating in the US, which serve as official representatives for the city government in the US, unless Beijing negotiates with Washington to have the offices included under its own diplomatic control or it grants the city more autonomy.
The commission urged lawmakers to do more to protect US supply chains of critical resources like semiconductors, rare earth metals and life-saving medications, noting how Russia’s weaponization of energy revealed the threat of excessive dependence on potentially hostile foreign powers.
In particular, it called for a crackdown on medicine imports from China, and urged the US Food and Drug Administration, which oversees medical products domestically, to identify all drugs with active ingredients from China “and develop alternative sourcing arrangements”.
Whether the congressional commission is correct in its assessment is hardly the point. The significance of its judgment lies elsewhere. What is clear is a bayonets-fixed approach in its attitude towards Beijing, comes from a House of Representatives and Senate that has been in leftist Democrat hands throughout the previous Trump administration. Yet, despite this, it has emerged with conclusions that are as decisive as anything the previous president could devise.
With such unanimity, between mutually loathing sides of the political spectrum, signifies a range of policy options for the United States, and undoubtedly the UK and Europe that suggests a major re-alignment of trading and diplomatic interests is in the offing.
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