[Congressional Record Volume 166, Number 134 (Wednesday, July 29, 2020)]
[Senate]
[Page S4562]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                                 China

  Mrs. BLACKBURN. Mr. President, it is interesting to hear my 
colleagues talk about China and COVID and our response. I think many of 
us looked at 2019 and felt like that was really a significant year for 
U.S.-China relations. It marked the 40th anniversary of bilateral 
diplomatic relations between Washington and Beijing, and we also 
finalized a phase 1 trade deal.
  This led many of us to being optimistic, but remember that 2019 also 
marked the 70th anniversary of Chairman Mao's ascension to the 
chairmanship of the Chinese Communist Party and the 30th anniversary of 
the massacre at Tiananmen Square.
  When you start asking questions about that history and how it has 
informed the decisions of current Chinese leadership, the capitalist 
facade that has been so carefully constructed by the propagandists in 
Beijing starts to peel away, and it starts to crack.
  After decades of espionage, military aggression, and horrific 
political violence inflicted on their own people, many here in 
Washington have grown numb to Chinese hostility. They kind of expect or 
accept that is the way they are going to act. That is the only 
explanation I could come up with for the shock that rippled through 
this town when we discovered that the Chinese Communist Party spent 51 
days muzzling the doctors, lawyers, and journalists who desperately 
tried to warn the rest of the world about the growing threat from the 
novel coronavirus.
  Our relationship with China has reached a tipping point. We will 
never be able to go back to what had been that cautious optimism that 
we had in 2019.
  Fortunately, it looks like both my colleagues here in Washington and 
many of our allies are allowing themselves to process the threat posed 
by Beijing's standard operating procedures. The UK has banned the use 
of equipment from Chinese tech giant Huawei for their ongoing 5G 
rollout, and France has implemented policies that restrict the use of 
Huawei's products. These decisions are giving some hope to the people I 
am talking to back in Tennessee every single day. They are happy to see 
that allies are following in our footsteps. This is a good thing. It is 
an opportunity for us to role-model how you work to unravel a 
relationship with an aggressor.
  They would also want me to tell you that they appreciate the Senate's 
growing bipartisan support for legislation like my SAMC Act, which will 
secure our pharmaceutical supply chains from Chinese interference, and 
Senator McSally's Civil Justice for Victims of COVID Act, which will 
allow Americans harmed by this pandemic to sue the Chinese Communist 
Party officials in U.S. court.
  But we all know that there is no single-shot bill we can use to 
decouple from China and put control back in the hands of American 
businesses, educators, institutions, and innovators. We have to begin 
to unravel these ties with China. Now, there are a lot of people in 
this town who think that this is impossible, and they will say: Oh, 
that is ill-advised. You do not want to try to unravel from China.
  I think they are wrong, and I think that we can and we must do this. 
But lipservice is not going to cut it. Over the past few months we have 
talked at length about what needs to be done, but, with few exceptions, 
we are light on specifics. So last Wednesday I published a white paper 
laying out the current state of affairs between the United States and 
China and talked about what got us to this position. Then, I have 120 
specific policy recommendations that Congress can use as a basis for 
future legislation, whether it is trade or agriculture or 
telecommunications or 5G or our military complex. I would like to use 
my remaining time to lay out a few of these recommendations as a place 
to start.
  By now most Americans are at least familiar with the term ``Belt and 
Road Initiative.'' This is an initiative program the Chinese have used 
to buy their way. They have bought their way into the good graces of 
governments in Asia, Africa, and Europe. The trillions of dollars in 
investment buys inroads and influence across countries of every 
economic background and in organizations like the United Nations.
  While we cannot and should not compete dollar for dollar, we should 
partner with our allies to prevent struggling governments from falling 
into this debt diplomacy or these debt traps. We must also secure our 
supply chains across every sector of our economy and bring critical 
manufacturing and technologies back to the United States.
  I mentioned the SAMC Act. It would incentivize companies to bring 
their manufacturing operations back to the United States and also fund 
partnerships between pharmaceutical companies and universities so that 
they can train the workforce we need in order to pull this 
manufacturing out of China and bring it back to communities right here.
  We should not hesitate in moving forward on this legislation. Once we 
invest in this new technology and infrastructure, we are going to have 
to invest in securing it by securing our emerging 5G networks. To that 
end, we need to make more spectrum available for the commercial 
wireless sector to ensure our continued leadership in 5G and other 
emerging technologies. If we fail to do so, we risk ceding ground to 
China in the standard-setting bodies that are going to define 5G 
internationally.
  We will not be able to stop China alone. We must look toward those 
international organizations, as well as allies and partners in the 
Indo-Pacific, to help us deter Chinese aggression and foster stable 
economic growth. This includes providing support for Hong Kong and 
Taiwan and promoting universal human rights standards, both in China 
and across the globe. We will also increase defense investment in the 
region through a newly created Pacific Deterrence Initiative.
  Most importantly, we must accept the fact that, at its core, China is 
not a normal country. It does not behave like a normal country. When Xi 
Jinping ascended to the head of the Chinese Communist Party in 2012, 
many assumed he was going to act as a reformer and turn away from the 
Maoist thought, but, predictably, he did not.
  We cannot simply wait for this problem to go away. Last week, Beijing 
escalated tensions by ordering Americans to vacate our only consulate 
in western China, distancing its abuses in Tibet and Xinjiang from 
American diplomatic personnel. You know what. It is not going to stop 
with this. They are accelerating their aggression.
  We have to become more independent of China. We are too dependent on 
them at this point. It is time for the United States to deny this era 
of Chinese impunity and change the way we are doing business. It is 
time to reestablish rules to guide the global economy, to encourage our 
allies to join us, and to hold Beijing accountable
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arkansas.