The newly established bipartisan House select committee tasked with studying strategic challenges coming from the Chinese government has aroused concerns in the Asian American community that lawmakers may wind up fueling anti-Chinese bigotry and broader anti-Asian discrimination in the United States.
The new committee, officially called the “Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party,” was established earlier this month by a vote of 365-65, making it one of the first House votes of the 118th Congress under Republican leadership to receive broad bipartisan backing.
While the 16-member committee — which will be led by Rep. Mike Gallagher, R-Wis. — won’t have any legislative jurisdiction, it will be tasked with making policy recommendations by year’s end on how to respond to Beijing’s “economic, technological, and security progress and its competition with the United States.”
