Dan Newhouse Blasts CCP's Efforts To 'Expand Its Authoritarian Sphere Of Influence Abroad'

3 months ago

During a hearing of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-WA) questioned witnesses about surveillance technology, and Chinese influence campaigns.

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Transcript

00:00Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to thank the three witnesses today for their testimonies

00:05on how the CCP strategically executes its great firewall strategy to control its domestic

00:12population as well as expand its authoritarian sphere of influence campaign abroad. These

00:19abuses of centralized power through surveillance technologies truly go against everything Western

00:25civilization has been fighting for since the creation of our free marketplace of ideas.

00:30Unfortunately, the CCP's great firewall strategy, in my humble opinion, goes far beyond just

00:37the control of information and possesses deadly implications for the rest of the world. For

00:42example, as many of you know, this committee's recent investigation unveiled how the CCP

00:50directly subsidizes, awards, incentivizes, protects, and invests in chemical companies

00:58responsible for producing 97 percent of the fentanyl in the world, much of that pouring

01:08through our southern border, contributing to killing more than 110,000 Americans every

01:13year. The CCP allows the illegal export of these deadly chemicals to occur while simultaneously

01:20censoring content about domestic fentanyl sales on the Internet. In other words, the

01:26CCP knowingly protects its domestic population from deadly fentanyl as they profit off poisoning

01:35of Americans.

01:37Chairman Molinar has given me the opportunity to lead the select committee's fentanyl

01:41working group, along with Mr. Auchincloss from Massachusetts, and address this issue

01:46by mobilizing legislative efforts. So I've got two questions on this subject. I'll start

01:51with Dr. Cooper. If the CCP truly wanted to prohibit fentanyl sales and exports on their

02:00highly regulated Internet platforms, how quickly could this occur? And does their inaction

02:08or lack of cooperation constitute drug warfare?

02:14I do think that the party, after the November meeting between Biden and Xi, made a commitment

02:21to follow through on fentanyl that they have not executed. I think that's quite clear.

02:26You can talk to officials within the administration, and they expected to have more cooperation

02:32from the Chinese. I don't know how fast they could crack down, but I think it's quite clear

02:37that officials on our side feel that there's a lot more that China could do that it is

02:42not doing today.

02:44Any thoughts on the whether or not this is drug warfare on their part?

02:49Well, I definitely think that it is an effort to well, that it enables efforts to damage

02:56the United States in fundamental ways. When I go talk about China across the country,

03:01not infrequently do I have someone show up in the audience who's lost a child to fentanyl,

03:07and I'm sure you have the same experience. I've talked about this with senior Chinese

03:13former officials and some current officials. I think some of them understand the damage

03:18that this is doing, and I don't think the party has responded in the way that they absolutely

03:23should have.

03:24So, Mr. Kretschmer, Mr. Kuang, thoughts?

03:33I don't have too much more to add beyond what Dr. Cooper has said, other than to essentially

03:39reassert that, yeah, that's the kind of topic that's incredibly well-censored in the Chinese

03:45domestic space. It's a thing that, like, when we're analyzing different censorship trends,

03:49always comes up as one of the things that's very tightly controlled, so we can definitely

03:53co-sensitize that much.

03:56I second on that. The aspect of looking at it is that the Chinese public, not where this

04:03is one of the important issues between the two countries, United States and China, Chinese

04:08public can be kept not only completely in the dark, but often being fed the opposite

04:13stories and propaganda narratives. That's giving this challenge even much harder to

04:21address.

04:22Thank you. Well, again, thank you all. I appreciate the contribution to this important subject.

04:27Mr. Chairman, I yield back.

Dan Newhouse Blasts CCP's Efforts To 'Expand Its Authoritarian Sphere Of Influence Abroad'

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