The US House of Representatives approved 25 anti-China laws in just one week in September: a clear sign that Washington’s new cold war is quickly heating up.
The hawkish House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party proudly described these days as “China Week”, boasting that much of the legislation had “overwhelming bipartisan” support.
NBC News noted that “many of the measures passed with bipartisan support at a time when viewing [China] primarily as a geopolitical rival is one of the few issues both Republicans and Democrats can agree on”.
Cold War Two fervor is reaching fever pitch in the United States. CIA Director William Burns has referred to China as the “bigge[st] long-term threat”. The last two US secretaries of state, Democrat Antony Blinken and Republican Mike Pompeo, gave speeches specifically dedicated to demonizing China.
In an article in the Financial Times in 2023, centrist British columnist Gideon Rachman recalled that, “Visiting Washington last week, it was striking how commonplace talk of war between the US and China has become”.
“Many influential people seem to think that a US-China war is not only possible but probable”, Rachman wrote, adding that “US officials are now looking at the cold war — not as a warning, but as a potential model”.
Among the bills passed during September 2024’s “China Week” was the “Countering the PRC Malign Influence Fund Authorization Act”, which would give $1.63 billion to the State Department and USAID over five years ($325 million each year from 2023 through 2027) in order to fund organizations that spread anti-China propaganda around the world.
Anti-interventionist think tank the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft noted that this massive funding for anti-China propaganda would amount to roughly twice the annual operating expenses of CNN.
Other bills approved in “China Week” include legislation that threatens the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office, targets Chinese officials and their family members over Taiwan, seeks to strengthen US influence in the Pacific region, deepens ties to Japan and South Korea, expands blacklists of Chinese companies, and hopes to weaken the renminbi.
Many of the bills would facilitate the imposition of further unilateral US sanctions on entities not only from China, but also from Russia, Iran, the DPRK (North Korea), Cuba, and Venezuela. (The United States has already imposed sanctions on one-third of all countries on Earth, including 60% of poor nations.)
The so-called “End Chinese Dominance of Electric Vehicles in America Act” portrays Chinese EVs as a supposed threat, and would restrict them. However, it fails to mention that, as the New York Times put it, “few Chinese electric cars are sold in U.S.” An April 2024 report by the US International Trade Commission found that Chinese vehicles made up a mere 2% of EV imports into the US from 2018 to 2023. Despite this, just a month later, President Joe Biden announced 100% tariffs on Chinese EVs.
Other bills passed during “China Week” target Chinese drones, batteries, biotechnology, routers and modems, telecommunications infrastructure, and media outlets.
Approved legislation would also block scientific cooperation with China, while banning the sale of US farmland to nationals of China, Russia, Iran, and the DPRK (North Korea).
An especially redundant bill adopted by the House would withhold funding to US universities that host Confucius Institutes – organizations that teach foreign students about Chinese languages and culture. This measure went through despite the fact that, as was reported in 2023 by the US Government Accountability Office (GAO), “In 2018, Congress restricted federal funding to schools with institutes; nearly all of the institutes have since closed”.
All of this legislation passed during “China Week” must subsequently be approved by the Senate and signed by the president before it officially becomes law.