Special committee will make proposals to counter the growing influence of the People’s Republic.
It took 15 ballots last week before Republican Kevin McCarthy was able to gather the necessary votes and was elected Speaker of the United States House of Representatives. There is much more unanimity, however, when it comes to China’s growing influence. This is perceived as a threat in the USA, so that from now on a separate committee will deal with how the USA can respond to this challenge. This includes geopolitical factors as well as the great dependence in the supply of medicines and raw materials such as rare earths, according to Bloomberg (paywall). All Republican lawmakers and most Democrats voted Tuesday to establish the new panel, which will make policy recommendations by the end of the year.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin expressed hope that China-U.S. relations will be considered objectively and appropriately by the committee’s members, according to Reuters news agency. The state-affiliated Chinese newspaper Global Times, on the other hand, feels reminded of McCarthy’s namesake Joseph, who led a campaign against real and perceived communists in the United States in the 1950s. Kevin McCarthy had recently called China’s Communist Party the “greatest geopolitical threat of our lifetime.”
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