It’s bad enough Joe Biden’s administration has taken action to expand China’s economic footprint in America and put US companies at a disadvantage. At the same time US lobbyists take up the cause of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to push Chinese products and investment in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) at the expense of American firms and markets. Some see the US-versus-PRC competitive showdown as just countries vying for market share. What many in government fail to realize that the PRC leaders make no distinction between economic competition and military engagement; winning both furthers the CCP goal of dominating the globe. Congress may prove to be the solution.
Lobbyists Feeding at the PRC Trough
In the meantime, neither party has a lock on pushing CCP presence in the US marketplace. In one instance, former legislators Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) and Rep. Toby Moffett (D-CT) have lobbied their former colleagues to loosen or prevent regulatory legislation unfavorable to Chinese companies. The PRC surveillance technology firm Hikvision is a good example. Both Vitter and Moffett represented Hikvision to congressional members. As Susan Crabtree pointed out in RealClearPolitics:
“Over the last several years, the United States has found Hikvision responsible for assisting the Chinese government’s genocide against the Uyghur Muslims through the Chinese Communist Party’s broad use of its cameras to track and surveil Uyghur populations and monitor an estimated 1 million Uyghurs forced into detention camps.”
The technology being hawked by Hikvision should concern Americans at home. “China’s ubiquitous surveillance of its citizens is the type of intrusion into people’s daily lives that Americans have avoided, mostly. Yet closed-circuit television systems are already in stores, on street corners, in hospitals, and in a growing number of places Americans frequent,” according to a recent Liberty Nation report. It is unseemly that US citizens and former legislators lobby to allow a company like Hikvision to do business in the United States, so that its products can place Americans in the same precarious loss of privacy as the Uyghurs.
Lobbyists May Have Met Their Match
Kevin McCarthy (Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
However, tough times may be coming for these influence peddlers for hire. The Republican House of Representatives has formed the Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, an early initiative of Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and Chairman Mike Gallagher (R-WI). “To win the new Cold War, we must respond to Chinese aggression with tough policies to strengthen our economy, rebuild our supply chains, speak out for human rights, stand against military aggression, and end the theft of Americans’ personal information, intellectual property, and jobs,” McCarthy and Gallagher wrote in an opinion piece for Fox News. We know they got the CCP’s attention because “China lashed out … at a new US House committee” dedicated to countering Beijing, demanding its members “discard their ideological bias and zero-sum Cold War mentality,” the Associated Press reported.
Changing the status quo is going to be a hard sell. China spent $63 million lobbying the US government in 2022. Money talks, and whether it is loud enough to dampen Congress’ enthusiasm to regulate more aggressively former government officials who work for the CCP against America’s interests is the dilemma. Nearly a year ago, a Heritage Foundation report asked, “Can Congress Limit the Ability of China (or Other Foreign Nations) to Lobby US Officials?” The answer it proposed took a middle-ground approach:
“It is undisputed that China poses a grave threat to the security of the United States, and it routinely seeks to gain an advantage over the United States by engaging in harmful activities such as the ongoing theft of America’s intellectual property. If Congress does not want to halt lobbying efforts by the Communist Chinese government and party completely, it could take lesser action … “
The Heritage report suggested that State Department officials should be present at “in-person or virtual meetings” between lobbyists and foreign government representatives. Whether that notion is practical or not, the practice could have a desired chilling effect on the conversations. Whatever solution Congress might adopt, reducing US citizens’ lobbying for China against US interests is a good start.
