WASHINGTON – On the first day back from summer recess, House lawmakers took action on a series of China-related bills. Two notable pieces of legislation require the blacklisting of Chinese biotech firms and funding for the State Department to coordinate efforts to counter the Chinese regime’s malign influence.
Amidst other pressing matters, including the need to pass spending bills, the House voted in a bipartisan manner to add a “China Week” to the legislative calendar. This widespread support reflects the consensus among lawmakers that the Chinese communist regime poses the greatest national security risk to the values of the United States.
The House passed 15 bills in total, with most of them fast-tracked through a 40-minute debate and voice vote. These bills primarily address the threat posed by the Chinese Communist Party in two areas: technology and influence.
Six bills seek to prevent Communist China from compromising U.S. security through insecure devices or predatory data collection. This includes Chinese drones, port cranes, and biotech companies collecting genetic data from Americans.
Another four bills aim to support U.S. global technological leadership by countering Chinese espionage and strengthening export controls.
One of the bills passed on September 9 is the Countering CCP Drones Act, introduced by Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.).
“The Chinese Communist Party is working to undermine American sovereignty by forcing Americans to rely and depend on insecure Communist Chinese technology,” Stefanik stated on the House floor. “Nowhere is this more evident than in the drone industry.”
The legislation specifically targets several prominent Chinese firms, including Beijing Genomics Institute (BGI Group), MGI, Complete Genomics, WuXi AppTec, and WuXi Biologics. The bill cites the risk of these companies being coerced by the CCP to transfer American data if required by the regime.
One significant concern in this sector, unlike other high-tech industries such as semiconductors, is the moral and ethical implications. If China becomes the first to dominate cutting-edge biotechnologies, it will dictate the ethical standards based on the CCP’s authoritarian socialist values. This could disadvantage Western liberal democracies that would likely regulate the technology differently.
Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) expressed concerns that the Commerce and Defense departments don’t currently blacklist the companies mentioned in the bill. He called for a more thorough process in banning specific companies and requested a recorded vote. The bill was ultimately passed in a 306-81 vote.
Rep. John Moolenaar (R-Mich.), chair of the House China panel and one of the original sponsors of the BIOSECURE Act, communicated via email to The Epoch Times: “It is Congress’s constitutional duty to write national security laws, and that includes the authority to investigate and name foreign-adversary-controlled companies in law because of the threat they pose to national security.” The bill passed the House with a vote of 351-36.
The proposed bills demonstrate a relatively restrained approach and are likely to gain broad bipartisan support. Some bills primarily call for preliminary risk assessments on China-related issues, while excluding actions that require more specific measures, such as restricting outbound investment to China or ending the de minimis privilege, which exempts shipments worth less than $800 from tariffs on goods made in China.
President Joe Biden has not indicated whether he endorses the initiative, which may be necessary to secure the passage of these bills in the Democrat-controlled Senate.
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