NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT FOR FISCAL YEAR 2022
Floor Speech
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Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, in my lifetime, the People's Republic of China has gone from a poor and isolated country to one that now accounts for 20 percent of global domestic product. There is no question that the driving force behind this dramatic shift is the ruthlessness of the Chinese Communist Party led by President Xi. The CCP's ruling strategy can best be described as win at all costs, which means that China never thinks twice about disregarding basic values and international norms. But there is no question that the most immediate and grave threats are against countries close to China's borders.
Last month, I led a congressional delegation to visit the Indo- Pacific to learn more from the people on the ground doing the hard work about the challenges they face and that we face in the Indo-Pacific. In my conversations with leaders in the Philippines, Taiwan, and India, I noticed they used a different vocabulary to describe China's behavior than what we hear in Washington, DC. They didn't just talk about China's ambitions; they warned of its threats of aggression. They didn't just share concerns about China's unification with Taiwan; they spoke of the potential for an invasion. They didn't just bring up human rights abuses; they condemned the blatant genocide committed against the Uighurs and other ethnic minorities in China.
Words matter, of course, and the soft lexicon that is often used to describe the Chinese Communist Party and the People's Republic of China here in the United States and particularly inside the beltway has the potential to create a false impression about China's objectives, and it plays right into their hands.
I think we should not continue to downplay the risks to the global world order and to peace itself by what China is doing. This isn't just a government interested in competing with the United States and other countries by playing by the rules of the international order; the Chinese Communist Party is an aggressive, even belligerent and hostile power that has made economic gains through stealing intellectual property and other activities that belie its stated ambitions to become part of the liberal world order.
For example, it squashes opposition by committing genocide against its own people and muzzling--even murdering--dissidents. China has literally become a police state, where the volumes of data that they have vacuumed up in that country and the ubiquitous technical surveillance that is mainly cameras that chronicle every aspect of the lives of their citizens and the use of things like artificial intelligence have allowed them to essentially control everything that does go on in China. And these are the same tools that they intend to use on other parts of the world.
We know China has spent a lot of money developing its military resources. It has come a long way, while the United States and other countries were focused post-9/11 on the Global War on Terror. While we were focused on the Middle East, the PRC and the CCP wasted no time in rebuilding their capabilities from a military standpoint.
And they are now aggressively claiming other parts of the region, not just Taiwan, but contested islands in the South China Sea that are claimed by Japan, by the Philippines, and other countries as well.
Well, as I mentioned, one of the greatest looming threats in the region is a potential invasion of Taiwan by the People's Republic of China.
Of course, as you can see, Taiwan is just a small island of about 24 million people, just off the coast of mainland China. It is not much larger than the State of Maryland.
In every possible way you can imagine, Taiwan is a stark contrast with China. For one, it is a true democracy. Voters go to the polls with the confidence that the election results are not predetermined. Successful businesses--and there are many of them--are built on good old-fashioned hard work, not government favoritism. And the people in Taiwan--the Republic of China--enjoy the same freedoms that we do here in the United States: freedom of speech, freedom of press, freedom of religion, and freedom of assembly.
Taiwan has been a self-governing entity for more than 70 years, but the Chinese Communist Party falsely asserts that the island republic is part of its territory. Indeed, Taiwan faces China as the last outpost of democracy, standing watch against authoritarianism.
Our congressional delegation met with the commander of the Indo- Pacific Command who described the current power dynamic rather succinctly. He said it is not a question of if China moves on Taiwan, but a question of when.
Indeed, the language we heard from our military leadership and others in the region was far more urgent in terms of the threat of the People's Republic of China against Taiwan than anything I have heard here in Washington, DC.
According to our top military leaders, we have an idea how long Xi might wait. He himself has said that he wants to be ready by 2027. But there is absolutely no guarantee that President Xi and the Chinese Communist Party of the People's Republic of China--there is no guarantee they won't move at another time of their choosing.
As I said, Taiwan is not the only nation on the CCP's list. China has territorial claims against a number of its neighbors. If you closed your eyes and just threw a dart at this region, you would likely hit one or more of those contested areas. Japan, the Philippines, Vietnam, Bhutan, India--all of those countries claim sovereign territory that is also contested and claimed by the Chinese Communist Party of the People's Republic of China.
Of course, it hasn't even been 25 years since China took control of Hong Kong under the ``one country, two systems'' framework. China had promised Hong Kong it would retain a high degree of autonomy for at least a half a century, but, obviously, Beijing eroded the freedoms and independence of Hong Kong to the point of basically hijacking that city and that entity.
The Indian Minister of Foreign Affairs in Delhi told our delegation that Taiwan isn't the problem; it is a China problem. And I think he has a point.
In other words, what is at stake here is much larger than the future of just one nation. It is the entire scope of Beijing's power and its ambitions in the region. Taiwan is not the final goal. It is the next step in a quest to reach regional dominance.
Taiwan will likely be the first target because it has been identified by President Xi and the Chinese Communist Party, but it certainly won't be the last. I think it would be the ultimate in naivety, first, to think, well, this is just about Taiwan. It is not just about Taiwan. China will continue to threaten; intimidate; and, unfortunately, I think, ultimately threaten and invade its neighbors. And if that aggression goes unchecked, the CCP's power grab will reach further and further.
Plus, I believe in the power of deterrence, what Ronald Reagan called peace through strength. Nobody wants a military conflict in this region--nobody.
If the CCP can attain its goals without a shot being fired, they will try to do that. They are already trying to do that. But the fact of the matter is, if the People's Republic of China and the Chinese Communist Party worked to conduct a military invasion of Taiwan, there are a multitude of risks of mistakes, miscalculations, and other dangers that could lead to a larger conflict.
And I believe we have a responsibility in the United States to make sure, to the extent humanly possible, that that does not happen. We want peace, but we also want to stand up to the kind of aggression that we are seeing in practice and being threatened in the Indo-Pacific region. I believe that countering and first confronting the threats from the PRC is one of the greatest national security imperatives of our generation.
Russia, obviously, is a significant power, mainly because it holds nuclear weapons; but it mainly tries to find places where the United States is having a hard time and tries to make those situations more challenging for us. It doesn't compare to the Chinese Communist Party and the PRC in terms of its regional ambitions, its attempt to project its power and its control over the region.
We need to reorient the way that our country views and responds to this threat, and I believe that time is of the essence. As I said, some people have said that President Xi could wait until as late as 2027 to try to take Taiwan, but there is no guarantee that it couldn't happen earlier if they deem it an opportunity to exist for them to do so.
The longer Beijing is treated as a reasonable, goal-oriented country by the international community, the more aggressive it will become. One seemingly small step we must take is to describe China's actions with accurate terms. We can't do the CCP any favor using watered-down euphemisms like human rights abuses when what we are really talking about is genocide. Here in the Senate, as we know, words are important, but those words need to be accompanied with action.
We will soon vote on the National Defense Authorization Act, which will help us raise the issue and visibility of this potential conflict and raise the opportunity for deterrence in response to growing threats posed by China. We can do good work here on the Defense authorization bill to raise the cost to the PRC in the event they decided to invade Taiwan.
The Defense Authorization Act includes a bipartisan bill I introduced with Senator Duckworth called the Taiwan Partnership Act. This bill would establish a formal partnership between the U.S. National Guard and the Taiwanese defense forces to strengthen Taiwan's preparedness.
Should troops need to deploy quickly in the event of a crisis, they would be armed with the same knowledge and skills as our dedicated U.S. National Guardsmen. This would also help Taiwan build up much of its asymmetric defenses.
The Defense Authorization Act also includes legislation I introduced with Senator King, from Maine, to ensure that the United States and Taiwan can improve defense interoperability. There shouldn't be any barriers to cooperating on important security measures like integrated air and missile defense systems.
The Defense Authorization Act includes other provisions to increase defense cooperation with Taiwan and equip the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command with greater resources. It also ensures that the United States will take a stronger approach and confront the threats being made by the Chinese Communist Party.
This is not a partisan issue, as you can tell. After the delegation I led to Taipei, it was followed on by a bipartisan coalition mainly from Members of the House, and I think it is absolutely critical that that spirit of bipartisanship and the reality of bipartisanship continues to exist when it comes to the threat posed by the People's Republic of China and the Chinese Communist Party.
I appreciate colleagues on both sides of the aisle who have championed the provisions I mentioned and those who may have other ideas about how we can deter acts of aggression, not only against Taiwan but against other countries in the region when it comes to disputed islands and other territory.
I want to thank Chairman Reed, Ranking Member Inhofe, and our colleagues on the Armed Services Committee for all the work they have put into this bill so far. One of our most solemn responsibilities is to provide for the common defense, and this is the best way to ensure that our national defense is prepared to meet the challenges on the horizon.
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