Ranking Member Raskin’s Opening Remarks During Hearing Examining China’s Autocratic Threats to Democracy
Washington, D.C. (June 26, 2024)—Below is Ranking Member Jamie Raskin’s opening statement, as prepared for delivery, at today’s hearing entitled “Defending America from the Chinese Communist Party’s Political Warfare, Part II.”
Opening Statement
As Prepared for Delivery
Ranking Member Jamie Raskin
“Defending America from the Chinese Communist Party’s Political Warfare, Part II”
June 26, 2024
The Majority has convened a hearing on “defending America from the Chinese Communist Party’s Political Warfare.”
This is paradoxical because our colleagues in the Majority have spent the last 18 months spreading propaganda and disinformation that Moscow and Beijing have used as “political warfare” against America as part of their sham impeachment inquiry against President Biden.
All over the world, from the autocrats in Moscow to the Communist bureaucrats in Mainland China to the theocrats in MAGA, the enemies of constitutional democracy and freedom seek to destabilize American democracy and freedom. The tyrants of the world are targeting Joe Biden and promoting Donald Trump, the kleptocrat and convicted felon from Mar-a-Lago who has fawningly described President Xi as “a brilliant man, called Vladimir Putin a “genius,” and said he “fell in love” with Kim Jong Un.
While Donald Trump has described President Xi as a “very good man,” under his leadership, China is an authoritarian police state and violator of the human rights and civil liberties of hundred millions of people. President Xi has persecuted, incarcerated, and oppressed the Tibetans, the Uyghurs, and the people of Hong Kong and Taiwan.
Xi has made common cause with his fellow tyrants, forming a “no limits” alliance with Putin’s Russia just a few weeks before Putin’s illegal invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Beijing maintains a defense treaty with Pyongyang and is a key ally to Kim Jong Un, a third-generation dictator and Communist monarch who presides over a totalitarian dungeon for his people.
At our last hearing on the CCP’s political warfare, Professor Tim Snyder explained how Chinese propaganda ploys have succeeded because certain American officials, including some Members of this Committee, have parroted Russian and Chinese state disinformation. In The Atlantic, Anne Applebaum describes how the CCP’s political propaganda against the United States both undermines Americans’ faith in our own institutions and helps to consolidate domestic repression in China. As she puts it:
“If people are naturally drawn to the image of human rights, to the language of democracy, to the dream of freedom, then those concepts have to be poisoned. That requires more than surveillance, more than close observation of the population, more than a political system that defends against liberal ideas. It also requires an offensive plan: a narrative that damages both the idea of democracy everywhere in the world and the tools to deliver it.”
Far from opposing these autocrats, Donald Trump has joined them in attacking our democracy by promoting utterly debunked claims of election fraud and orchestrating a lawless and violent campaign to overturn the 2020 election. He has openly stated his desire to pardon criminal insurrectionists and rule as a dictator, using government not for the common good but to pursue his political enemies and enrich himself and his family.
Here's another inconvenient truth. As President, Donald Trump received millions from the Chinese government and state-owned companies—to say nothing of the valuable trademarks Chinese authorities rushed to grant him and his family members. In exchange, he opposed sanctions against Chinese telecommunications companies and banks even when they threatened our national security, he assured President Xi that sending Uighurs to forced labor camps was “exactly the right thing to do” and that violently cracking down on pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong was acting “very responsibly.” He even tried to cancel military exercise with Japan and South Korea because China and Russia complained.
Just last year, Donald Trump reversed his stance against Tik Tok, a Chinese social media platform that has raised national security risks. Why? To help out one of his billionaire friends and megadonors who owns 15% of Tik Tok and appealed to Trump directly to flip his position.
While Donald Trump has proclaimed that he and Xi “love each other,” the Biden-Harris Administration has responded forcefully to the political, security and economic challenges posed by the CCP. As Secretary Blinken put it, the U.S. relationship with China is “the biggest geopolitical test of the 21st century.”
The Biden Administration has shored up our democratic institutions to withstand attacks from autocrats and strengthened our alliances with democracies in the Indo-Pacific, Europe, and around the world. While Donald Trump has said he would encourage Russia to do “whatever the hell they want” to any NATO member country that doesn’t meet spending guidelines on defense, President Biden has established AUKUS—a security pact with Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States to help sustain peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific region.
Domestically, bills championed by Congressional Democrats and signed into law by President Biden, including the Inflation Reduction Act, Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, and CHIPS and Science Act, are investing in American workers and American innovation, creating hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs and establishing domestic supply chains in strategic industries—from semiconductors to electric vehicles and batteries to steel, aluminum, and solar cells to medical products--in communities around the country. These are big wins not just for our economy but for our national security as well.
President Trump has idolized and emulated dictators like Xi and Putin and worked to move our country toward authoritarianism and away from democracy and the rule of law. In stark contrast, the Biden-Harris Administration recognizes that the key to outcompeting the People’s Republic of China lies in defending the extraordinary journey of our democracy, the enduring strength of our international relationships, and the revitalization of our economic competitiveness.
I look forward to exploring these themes with our expert witnesses.
Thank you Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
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