China

Floor Speech

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Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, this year's Winter Olympics are officially underway on the home turf of the Chinese Communist Party. Of course, Americans are rooting hard for our outstanding Team USA athletes, but this year's setting has also trained spotlights worldwide on the abuse and repression the CCP inflicts on its own people and aspires to inflict on much of the world. Unfortunately, this has also occasioned some instances of jaw-dropping tone-deafness and gullibility from American voices.

I noted on this floor several years ago that as China has modernized its economy, too many wealthy and powerful American actors have seemed willing to help whitewash the CCP's many abuses or at least turn a blind eye. Hollywood self-censoring our own American films to satisfy President Xi and his cronies is just one example.

Well, last week, one American broadcaster seemed to uncritically amplify the CCP's propaganda goal when they included a member of the oppressed Uighur minority in the opening ceremonies.

This broadcaster called the CCP's obvious propaganda stunt ``an in- your-face response to those Western nations, including the U.S., who have called this Chinese treatment of that group `genocide.' '' President Xi couldn't have scripted it better.

Also, last week, a faculty member at a Big Ten university went on TV and compared China's secret police to American police officers and China's tyranny to America's voting laws. Here was the quote:

Who are we to criticize China's human rights record when we have ongoing attacks by the agents of the State against unarmed citizens, and we've got assaults on the voting rights of people of color in various States in this country?

Really? Beyond absurd.

The truth is, the CCP has turned Xinjiang Province into a giant oppression factory, where they enslave, sterilize, and commit genocide against the Muslim minority.

The truth is, the CCP has systematically worn down human rights and democracy in Hong Kong and jailed Hongkongers for speaking up.

The truth is, the CCP is an aggressive, irresponsible presence in the Pacific region and well beyond.

America's national security and economic competition with the CCP is a defining challenge for our country--and not just us but for all our friends and partners around the world, anyone who values an international order built on freedom and self-determination instead of their opposites.

Last year, the Senate took some bipartisan steps to strengthen America's hand in that competition. The bipartisan U.S. Innovation and Competition Act was not any Senator's or any committee's or either party's idea of a perfect bill, but this delicate compromise product made headway on issues from critical supply chains to counterespionage, to intellectual property. And the Senate passed the bill last June, and the House has done nothing for 8 months--nothing from House Democrats from last June until just last week.

So a few days ago, instead of passing the Senate's careful compromise, House Democrats slapped together a partisan bill stuffed with poison pills and the kinds of things they tried to put in their reckless tax-and-spending spree that failed at the end of last year. They didn't even bother to try working with House Republicans. The whole exercise was completely unserious.

House Democrats' version mentions the word ``climate'' nearly as many times as it mentions the word ``China.'' It pours billions into the U.N. Green Climate Fund so the United States can borrow money from China to give it to an international body, which can then give it to China.

Their bill even goes out of its way to include provisions on--listen to this--marijuana banking.

China has been steadily building up its military and economic might, and the Democrats' answer is to help Americans get high?

Drug overdoses on fentanyl just became the leading cause of death for Americans aged 18 to 45 across our entire country. Much of this poison pours into our country from, of course, China. And Democrats' plan to combat this is some more marijuana on the side?

Needless to say, this is not a winning strategy for a global competition between great powers.

So here is the bottom line. The bipartisan Senate USICA bill was itself a delicate compromise product. Any Democrats hoping to yank the bill to the far left or insert poison pills are badly, badly mistaken.

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