Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns joined a letter to the leadership of the House of Representatives, organized by Asian Americans Advancing Justice with the partnership of fifty faith and civil society groups, in opposition to the reauthorization of the House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party, due in part to wanton fearmongering and its hostile and aggressive rhetoric. Read this letter as a PDF.
December 9, 2024
Dear Speaker Johnson and Leader Jeffries:
CC: Chairman John Moolenaar & Ranking Member Raja Krishnamoorthi
We at Asian Americans Advancing Justice - AAJC and the 51 undersigned organizations are writing to express our strong opposition to a reauthorization of the House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party Select Committee in the upcoming 119th Congress. While we are clear-eyed about the legitimate national security and economic concerns with the Chinese Communist Party - including but not limited to cybersecurity, intellectual property rights, and human rights abuses – we strongly believe that renewing the Select Committee would not effectively advance the shared goal of seriously addressing these issues. Instead, reauthorizing the Select Committee would only continue to specifically target an individual community in a manner that will lead to a rise in anti-Asian and anti-Chinese sentiment in this country at a time when Asian immigrants and Asian Americans are already especially vulnerable to racial profiling, discrimination, violence, and hate after the COVID - 19 pandemic.
Since the Select Committee’s formation in 2023, we have opposed a number of bills that it either has played an active role in developing or otherwise referred to as “critical pieces of legislation.” Most recently, during the problematically-dubbed “China Week,” the House voted on two bills despite vocal opposition, one of which would reinstate the now-defunct “China Initiative” – a program which used racial profiling to target Chinese immigrant and Chinese American scientists and accuse them of largely unsubstantiated claims of espionage – and another that recalls past efforts to use misguided claims of national security to hinder Asian immigrants and other marginalized communities from becoming land owners.
We have also expressed concern regarding Select Committee members’ consistent uses of fearmongering, hostile, and aggressive rhetoric when characterizing the U.S. - China relationship. For instance, a May 17, 2023 hearing covered the “economic warfare” of the CCP, notwithstanding the fact that witnesses were asked questions about intellectual property theft and exploitation of U.S. markets, rather than either country’s military or weaponry. Just a month later on June 18th. 2023, the Select Committee subjected all shipments from China to scrutiny when it requested records of Chinese-originating mail from the United States Postal Service for FY21 and FY22, adopting a blunt approach when it required narrow and deliberate action. Most recently in August 2024, Chairman Moolenaar spoke to the media about a largely imagined fear of CCP land purchases near American military bases. His appearance and comments doubled down on legislation that has too often been overly broad and not narrowly tailored, so as to threaten the civil rights and liberties of innocent individuals.
Finally, it is also important to note that the House is already well equipped to address PRC-related concerns without reauthorizing the Select Committee. According to its own website, the Select Committee identifies multiple issues of interest, including TikTok, the Uyghur genocide, and the national defense, and yet they all clearly fall within the domain of permanent congressional committees that, unlike the Select Committee, have the authority to take action on legislative items. Given its overlapping topics of interest with other congressional committees, it is clear that the Select Committee is both unnecessary to advance critical U.S.-China legislation, and jurisdictionally redundant. Instead of reauthorizing a committee that perpetuates a harmful, zero-sum and adversarial framework and pours more fuel on existing racial animus, the House should redirect much-needed resources elsewhere.
As leading civil society organizations across a spectrum of issues, we urge you to decline reauthorizing the Select Committee and chart a new course on U.S. - China relations, one that appropriately balances our country’s interests with the individual rights of Asian immigrants and Asian Americans. The downstream effects of reauthorization are clear for the AAPI community: discrimination and racial profiling, particularly against Chinese immigrants or Chinese Americans, who will be unwittingly caught in the crossfire through no fault of their own. We must remain nuanced and deliberate in our tone and language, especially when discussing these complicated global affairs with severe domestic consequences.
Sincerely,