During the 2020 election cycle, there was bipartisan effort to stand up the Communist China's crony capitalism:
TWO MONTHS BEFORE the presidential election, the US is bitterly divided—except about China. From both sides of the aisle, there are calls to disentangle the two countries’ high-tech economies.
Democrats and Republicans use strikingly similar language to condemn China. There is bipartisan support for recent steps by the Trump administration, including tough controls on telecom giant Huawei, restrictions on data flows from Chinese apps like TikTok and WeChat, and “buy American” policies to limit dependence on supply chains from China.
“It is a fact that when you’re doing business with a Chinese company, you’re doing business with the Chinese Communist Party,” Senator Marco Rubio (R-Florida), a leading voice on China policy, told the National Defense University last December. China’s push for global standards in areas such as 5G technology, artificial intelligence, and quantum computing are part of an effort to “dominate the world,” warned Senator Mark Warner (D-Virginia), a former telecom executive who has become the face of the Democratic party on China, in a speech last year.
The two senators have cosponsored legislation to develop 5G alternatives to Huawei and funnel more than $1 billion in government money to them, an industrial-policy approach that previously was anathema to Republicans.
But this consensus proves to be shallow when you look deeper into the policies backed by both camps. In the election campaign, Trump and his deputies blame China for deliberately spreading the Covid-19 virus, and seeking the economic destruction of the US. In July, Attorney General William Barr labeled Silicon Valley and Hollywood “pawns of Chinese influence.” He said companies such as “Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and Apple have shown themselves all too willing to collaborate with the [Chinese Communist Party].”
Democratic candidate Joe Biden and his senior foreign policy advisers do see China as the US’ primary strategic competitor. Biden, fending off Trump’s assault on him as weak on China, has assailed the president for cozying up to Chinese president Xi Jinping while ignoring the pandemic. “There is a consensus for toughness,” says Jeffrey Bader, a former national security adviser to President Obama on Asia. “Who wants to be seen as soft?”
But the Biden camp rejects the more apocalyptic vision of China as a deadly enemy that must be defeated in a new Cold War. They envision areas of cooperation with China on climate change and other subjects.
Now a conservative group of House Republicans are organizing a focused study on China:
For the first time in its history, the Republican Study Committee (RSC)—the largest conservative caucus on Capitol Hill—will make countering the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) a key part of its agenda under the leadership of its newly elected chairman, Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind.).
As part of this large-scale effort, Banks said that he and others in the House committee will introduce more than 20 bills this week alone dedicated to confronting the China threat and holding the Biden administration accountable for weak policies on China.
The legislative barrage will touch upon a wide range of issues broadly focused on pushing back against the CCP’s influence in the United States.
“We’ve made countering communist China a platform of the RSC for the first time, under my leadership,” Banks told The Epoch Times. “It deserves our attention, and as the largest caucus, our members understand this is the greatest threat that we face and that we have to confront it.”
Here are some details Banks wants to work on:
Banks is introducing a number of measures including the “Stop Funding the PLA Act,” which will protect U.S. investments from flowing to China’s military-industrial base. Other RCS members are introducing legislation that would stop Biden from removing Huawei from the Commerce Department’s entity list and legislation to stop Biden from lifting sanctions on People’s Liberation Army-linked firms.
“China’s objective is to dominate the United States of America economically and militarily, to become the hegemonic power of the entire world, and to put the United States of America under its thumb,” the congressman said. “And for years, they’ve been steadily marching towards that end goal.”
With Democrats in full control in DC, there will be a need to get some Democrats to go along with this. You would think there would be plenty of Democrats upset at China's civil rights abuses against Muslims:
During a town hall on Feb. 16, Biden appeared to downplay the genocide against the Uyghur population in China by saying that different countries and their leaders can be expected to follow “different norms.” The president’s comments sparked criticism, and Banks described them as “deeply, deeply troubling.”
“I’m not quite sure what to make of it,” he said. “It’s so off the wall and wrong. It’s really hard for me to wrap my head around.”
Here is more details on the civil rights abuse:
The Chinese government has facilitated the mass transfer of Uyghur and other ethnic minority citizens from the far west region of Xinjiang to factories across the country. Under conditions that strongly suggest forced labour, Uyghurs are working in factories that are in the supply chains of at least 82 well-known global brands in the technology, clothing and automotive sectors, including Apple, BMW, Gap, Huawei, Nike, Samsung, Sony and Volkswagen.
This report estimates that more than 80,000 Uyghurs were transferred out of Xinjiang to work in factories across China between 2017 and 2019, and some of them were sent directly from detention camps. The estimated figure is conservative and the actual figure is likely to be far higher. In factories far away from home, they typically live in segregated dormitories, undergo organised Mandarin and ideological training outside working hours, are subject to constant surveillance, and are forbidden from participating in religious observances. Numerous sources, including government documents, show that transferred workers are assigned minders and have limited freedom of movement.
China has attracted international condemnation for its network of extrajudicial ‘re-education camps’ in Xinjiang. This report exposes a new phase in China’s social re-engineering campaign targeting minority citizens, revealing new evidence that some factories across China are using forced Uyghur labour under a state-sponsored labour transfer scheme that is tainting the global supply chain.
Sounds like China and America's Big Tech have a problem with systemic racism that includes the use of slave labor in order to reduce the cost of their products. So will Democrats be principled enough to oppose Biden's corrupt relationship with Communist China, or will they instead support the use of Chinese tactics such as ‘re-education camps’ to eliminate their conservative political opponents? In other words, are the Democrats sincere about their progressive diversity and inclusive agenda, or is political power their top and overriding goal? Is there enough Democratic Congressional members principled enough to see through the use of a race war to divide and conquer America as part of a communist revolution, and stop being lead by the reins that are held by Pelosi and Schumer? Will American Muslims and blacks come to realize that Biden, Pelosi and Schumer are the real white supremacists?
UPDATE: I found the January 13, 2021 (Pre-Biden) ABC News report:
U.S. Customs and Border Protection said Wednesday it will detain all cotton and tomato products produced in China’s Xinjiang province.
The Withhold Release Order (WRO) issued by CBP is based on information that “reasonably indicates” the use of forced labor within China’s so-called “re-education” camps. CBP also claims China is oppressing its Muslim population in that region.
“The goal isn’t just to interdict shipments ... that's actually the fallback plan,” Acting DHS Deputy Secretary Ken Cuccinelli told reporters Wednesday. “The goal of the WRO is that they stop and that the shipments never arrive -- the ultimate goal is that China abandons these horrific practices.”
This is the fourth WRO that CBP has issued in 2021 and the second on products originating in Xinjiang. China’s Xinjiang province accounted for eight of the 13 WROs that CBP issued in 2020 -- all stemming from allegations of forced labor.
CBP officials and human rights experts estimate that somewhere between 1 million to 3 million Uighurs, Kazakhs and others are being detained in what U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has dubbed "internment camps" throughout China's Xinjiang province. There are about 1,300 of these facilities scattered throughout the region and they've allegedly forced detainees to work without compensation in nearby factories, according to those same officials.
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