[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 105 (Thursday, June 15, 2023)]
[House]
[Pages H2953-H2955]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1200
               COUNTERING CHINESE COMMUNIST PARTY THREATS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 9, 2023, the Chair recognizes the gentleman from New York (Mr. 
Santos) for 30 minutes.
  Mr. SANTOS. Mr. Speaker, nearly 50 years ago, during the Cold War, 
Soviet Russia was the enemy of the people and the biggest threat to the 
free world.
  Fast forward to 2023, and it appears that history is repeating itself 
once again as the threat of nuclear annihilation comes full circle as 
two opposing ideological blocs dominate the world.
  General Secretary Xi Jinping has imitated Soviet Russia's playbook 
ever since he came to power more than 20

[[Page H2954]]

years ago. The Chinese Communist Party has built a cabal of global 
partners through predatory and oppressive investments in foreign 
countries, political strong-arming, stealing American technology, and 
strengthening ties with anti-American tyrannical leaders.
  This plan is taken straight from the Soviet's playbook. Only this 
time, China is infinitely stronger than the Soviet Union ever was.
  The United States must recognize and take immediate action against 
China's push for influence in the developing world. The Soviet Union 
used military might and territory conquest to forge strategic alliances 
and expand its influence past the Iron Curtain. However, China mainly 
uses economic sway and exploits our globalized economic system to 
expand.
  Over the past two decades, China has emerged as the critical trading 
partner for many regions and developing countries across the globe, and 
it is not by coincidence. China is intentionally targeting less-
developed countries to popularize its authoritarian model and undermine 
developing democracies worldwide.
  China's strategic approach is rendered explicitly in Xi Jinping's 
Belt and Road Initiative, aka the BRI, a lending gambit that grants 
China's allies, over 140 nations, billions of dollars under the 
pretense of economic integration and interconnected development.
  China has bought up so much copper, pork, and soy, and constructed so 
many roads, trains, power grids, and bridges, that it has surpassed the 
U.S. as South America's largest trade partner, and it is now Brazil's, 
Chile's, and Peru's single largest trading partner.
  Compared to the U.S. and the EU, Latin America's bilateral trade in 
goods with China grew dramatically from $14.6 billion in 2001 to $315 
billion in 2020. That is a 21.5-fold increase since Beijing joined the 
World Trade Organization.
  These insidious tactics have made China an undeniable economic 
superpower through unbounded dishonesty and underhanded manipulation.
  In 2019, China, an active trade partner of the U.S., allowed the yuan 
to fall below the 7-to-1 yuan to U.S. dollar peg it had maintained 
since 2015. This action set off a day of intense selling in global 
markets. In the U.S., the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 2.9 
percent, its worst daily decline all year.
  By devaluing its currency, China could effectively undercut 
competitors in the marketplace by offering lower prices on its exports 
and, according to the U.S. Treasury Department, gain an unfair 
competitive advantage in international trade.
  Intellectual property theft, corporate espionage, forced technology 
transfer, widespread product dumping, and currency manipulation are 
just a few of the economic warfare tactics used by the Chinese 
Communist Party.
  This brings me to my point. One of China's most recent efforts to 
destabilize the United States involves forging an unofficial alliance 
with Russia to maintain Vladimir Putin's power at all costs. China is 
also the top trader with Russia and Ukraine.
  Before Russia invaded Ukraine, China had already surpassed Germany 
and the U.S. as Russia's most significant commercial partner and the 
largest consumer of its oil and gas. China has provided a financial 
lifeline to Russia over the past year by buying goods that the West 
won't and helping Russia continue to access financial markets despite 
harsh Western sanctions.
  China not only accounted for the highest year-over-year rise in 
export volume to Russia of any country in 2022, but it was also the 
largest exporter to Russia overall.
  Moving on, it is no secret that Putin and Xi are determined to end 
the U.S. and create what Xi called a new model of major country 
relations.
  Sure enough, they have had great success in forming the BRICS bloc 
and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, whose citizens comprise two-
thirds of the world's population.
  China has been expanding its military production capabilities and is 
now the world's fourth largest arms exporter. There has been a drastic 
80 percent increase in Chinese military sales to regions across the 
globe throughout the last decade. A growing number of United States 
defense officials are expressing concerns about China's swift military 
modernization.
  At this rate, the United States cannot keep up with their prices and 
turnaround, especially in regions like the Middle East, South Asia, and 
Africa. Between 2017 and 2020, Chinese arms exports to sub-Saharan 
Africa outpaced the United States by a ratio of nearly 3-to-1.
  China has spread its malevolent influence this far simply because 
China is determined to bolster our enemies and supplement them with 
whatever they need to undermine democracy and our sovereignty.
  China has allied with other iron-fisted regimes that are presently in 
the crosshairs of U.S. sanctions, including some of the world's most 
monstrous dictators, such as Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela and Russia's 
Vladimir Putin.
  China has shipped more than $12 million in drones to Russia since it 
invaded Ukraine, indicating quiet collaboration between the two.
  Recently, Chinese state-affiliated entities sold metals and 
centrifuges to corporations affiliated with Iran's Ministry of Defense 
and Armed Forces Logistics to aid in constructing Iran's first 
hypersonic missile, which amplifies Iran's nuclear capabilities.
  Despite debt-trapping Venezuela, China has remained their steadfast 
ally, negotiating payment grace periods and concealing trades.
  China has even gone so far as to support a veto of the 2019 U.S.-
backed resolution in the United Nations calling for free and fair 
presidential elections. The Maduro regime has become reliant on China 
for disinformation campaigns and social control programs, including an 
ID card that serves as a scorecard of loyal Venezuelan citizens to the 
regime.
  Close to $68 billion in loans has been given to Venezuela by China 
since 2007, plus around 490 agreements have been signed in diverse 
areas of investment. The exact nature of these investments is still yet 
to be made public, but essentially everything comes down to extracting 
Venezuela's rich mineral supply.
  In addition, some of these quiet deals encompass state-affiliated 
entities that have sold over $615 million worth of weapons to Venezuela 
in the past 8 years.
  This is the perfect example of the kind of mischief destabilization 
the CCP is known for--preying on other countries via unsustainable and 
corrupt lending while ignoring global labor and environmental standards 
for their own economic gain.
  Even with their own country, the CCP will only continue to enhance 
their economic development. Forced labor has become common practice and 
part of the CCP's plan for Xinjiang's economic development, which 
includes making it a hub of textile and apparel manufacturing.
  In fact, tens of thousands of Uyghurs detained in concentration camps 
for religious persecution were sent to factories throughout China 
linked to 83 global brands. To cover up a mass genocide and enslavement 
of the Uyghur people, Chinese officials called the policy ``poverty 
alleviation.''
  More than a million Uyghurs are locked up in camps in their homeland 
or blindfolded and transported to prison by truckloads. Brutal crimes 
against Uyghur women, including forced sterilization and abortion, have 
been carried out to diminish the Uyghur population. Children are taken 
away from their parents and under pressure to deny their Uyghur 
ancestry.
  China's deep pockets have left its partners notably silent. 
Prioritizing their economic ties and strategic relationships with 
China, many other foreign governments continue to ignore human rights 
abuses.
  Taking another page out of Soviet Russia's book, propaganda, 
censorship, and disinformation are pillars of the CCP's grand strategy 
toward world domination. Their goal is to make the state and its 
objectives appear favorable to the world while simultaneously 
manipulating markets, lying, cheating, and stealing to fuel its 
ceaseless attacks on democracy.
  The COVID pandemic was the perfect example of what kind of propaganda 
the China Communist Party is known for. Millions of Americans died of 
the coronavirus. The epidemic was first reported in Wuhan, a city in 
central China. However, instead of alerting the

[[Page H2955]]

global community in the early stages of the outbreak, the CCP sought to 
cover up the severity of the coronavirus outbreak but also to carry out 
a great propaganda campaign downplaying the severity of COVID-19, 
attempting to shift responsibility and hide the origins of the virus.
  I would hope the Biden administration and Congress would be willing 
to step up to the plate and finally take a different approach toward 
prevention and protecting the American people from the CCP's 
unrelenting attempts to infringe on our national security. I hope that 
as leaders of the free world we will take proactive steps to counter 
the CCP's threat toward democracy and efforts to infiltrate our 
sovereignty.
  This is why I have introduced several bills that would hold China 
accountable and protect our Nation's innovation, ideas, and way of 
life.
  Instead, we have senior officials of the DOJ colluding with the CCP 
to have Chinese political asylees exiled from the United States to be 
tortured and killed by CCP agents.
  We have a President who promises to buy American but vetoes 
legislation that has reinstated tariffs on solar panels from Chinese 
companies in Southeast Asia. We have an administration actively 
allowing the CCP to dodge responsibility for COVID.

                              {time}  1215

  Drug traffickers are smuggling fentanyl produced by China into the 
United States through our unsecured borders killing millions of 
Americans while benefiting China from a weakening America due to the 
fentanyl epidemic.
  There are ways we can legislate to make a safer, more secure, and 
better America for the next generation. Here are 10 measures I have 
introduced to counter the threat posed by the Chinese Communist Party:
  H. Con. Res. 51 is a concurrent resolution that makes it the opinion 
of Congress that the Chinese Communist Party is the greatest threat to 
freedom and the free world.
  H.R. 4001 is a bill which includes a provision to prohibit the United 
States from selling weaponry to the People's Republic of China and the 
Chinese Communist Party.
  H. Con. Res. 52 is a concurrent resolution condemning Cuba and the 
Chinese Communist Party for discussing and implementing an agreement to 
build a Chinese Communist Party spy base on the island of Cuba, 90 
miles from the United States' coast.
  H.R. 4000 is a bill to authorize the United States to bring civil 
actions against the Government of the People's Republic of China for 
harm suffered by the state as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
  H.R. 3757 is a bill to prohibit the availability of Federal funds to 
institutions of higher education that fund the Confucius Institute.
  H.R. 3664 is a bill to prohibit the availability of Federal funds to 
the World Health Organization pending the conduct of an investigation 
relating to the influence over such organization by the Chinese 
Communist Party and for other purposes.
  H.R. 3598 is a bill to direct the Secretary of State to conduct a 
comprehensive study assessing the Chinese Communist Party's role in the 
distribution of fentanyl in the United States.
  H.R. 3597 is a bill to direct the President to impose sanctions on 
the People's Republic of China.
  H. Con. Res. 48 is a bill condemning the Chinese Communist Party for 
the Wuhan Lab leak causing the deadly COVID-19 epidemic.
  H. Res. 421 is a resolution expressing the sense of the House of 
Representatives that the Chinese Communist Party should be held 
accountable for present-day efforts of knowingly and intentionally 
manipulating their currency.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________