In the space of 24 hours this week, a pair of U.S. House committees held hearings exploring the impact of China’s aggressive use of economic power against the U.S. and its allies, and considered measures the U.S. might take to counter Beijing’s efforts.

More than half a dozen witnesses told lawmakers about the ways China uses its economic might to coerce smaller countries into providing favorable trade arrangements and to force businesses that want to operate in China to surrender intellectual property, which is then provided to Chinese-owned competitors.

Other witnesses testified that China’s economic policies are part of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s broader ambition to turn China into a globally dominant economic player that will ultimately outweigh the United States on the world stage.

One of the witnesses, Robert Lighthizer, who served as U.S. Trade Representative under former President Donald Trump, captured the tone of both hearings when he said, “It is not an exaggeration to say that the Chinese Communist Party has been waging an economic war against the United States for decades.”

VOA asked the Chinese Embassy to reply to the allegations detailed in the hearings but did not receive a response.

However, last week, when Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin was asked about G-7 countries’ complaints about Chinese economic coercion, he turned the accusation back on the U.S, saying, “If any country should be criticized for economic coercion, it should be the United States. The U.S. has been overstretching the concept of national security, abusing export control and taking discriminatory and unfair measures against foreign companies. This seriously violates the principles of market economy and fair competition.”

A ‘naive bet’

In a hearing on Wednesday night, the Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) convened a hearing titled, “Leveling the Playing Field: How to Counter the CCP’s Economic Aggression.”

Rep. Mike Gallagher, the Republican who chairs the panel, began the hearing with a video that documented efforts by past U.S. administrations, both Republican and Democratic, to welcome the People’s Republic of China (PRC) into the global economic community, including granting it privileged trade status in the 1990s and early 2000s.

“For the last 25 years, both parties largely made the same naive bet on China, that robust economic engagement would lead the Chinese Communist Party to political liberalization,” he said. “But Beijing saw our quintessentially American optimism as an opportunity to exploit and our treaties and international commitments as rules ‘for thee but not for me.’”

“Well, now the error of wishful thinking is over,” he said. “The CCP’s economic warfare uses any and all available leverage to coerce us and our allies and it’s time that we defend ourselves and the free world.”

Fundamental questions

The committee’s ranking Democrat, Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, was equally adamant about the need to challenge China on the global stage.

“This is the fundamental question: Who will be the economic and innovation leader for the remainder of the 21st century? Will it be America, or the CCP?” Krishnamoorthi said.

Stepping in to counter China’s various forms of economic influence in the world must be “pressing priorities” for the U.S., he said. “The moment to act is not in 10 years or five years or next year. It’s now.”

In addition to Lighthizer, the committee heard from Roger Robinson, former chairman of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission. In his testimony, Robinson claimed that U.S. investors are, in some cases unknowingly, subsidizing Chinese companies by participating in investment funds that contain Chinese corporate debt.

Robinson argued that because Chinese firms are not subject to the same disclosure requirements as firms in the U.S. and other developed countries, they should not be allowed continued access to U.S. capital markets.

A third witness, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, called for immediate action to bolster investment and innovation in key emerging technologies, including artificial intelligence, to keep the U.S. ahead of China in some areas and to catch up in others.

“It’s never too late to stop digging our own grave,” he said.

Rejecting economic coercion

On Thursday morning, in a hearing before the Indo-Pacific Subcommittee of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Rep. Young Kim opened the hearing with a statement that was highly critical of China’s behavior towards its neighbors. For example, she accused Beijing of causing the recent crash in Sri Lanka’s economy by pressuring its leaders to take on excessive debt through its “Belt and Road” infrastructure-building initiative.

She called on members to “recognize the immense economic pressure that the PRC puts on our allies, partners and friends around the world.”

“The CCP uses debt-trap diplomacy through the Belt and Road Initiative to achieve its political goals abroad,” said the Republican lawmaker. “So much so that it is willing to crash economies and generate instability as it did in Sri Lanka.”

Last month, after Sri Lanka and its creditors launched debt restructuring talks without the participation of China, the country’s largest creditor, Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Wenbin was asked if the absence of his country reflected frustration about Beijing’s approach to third-world countries indebted to China. He said, “China calls on commercial and multilateral creditors to jointly participate in Sri Lanka’s debt restructuring under the principle of fair burden-sharing. We have been in close communication with Sri Lanka and supported Chinese financial institutions in actively discussing debt treatment arrangements with Sri Lanka.”

Legislation proposed

Rep. Ami Bera, the ranking Democrat on the sub-committee, pushed back against Beijing’s claims that the U.S. is trying to isolate China economically, saying, “Truth is, we’d like to maintain the status quo, which has lifted all the countries in that region through a rules based order, but we have to respond to Chinese aggression and Chinese economic coercion.”

Bera called on Congress to pass a measure that would direct the Biden administration to form “an interagency task force to respond to the PRC government’s acts of economic coercion and required the evaluation of the impacts on U.S. business and economic performance.”

The same bill, he said, would give the president “new tools to provide rapid economic support to partners and allies facing economic coercion from the PRC and hold the PRC accountable for its actions.”

Intellectual property theft

Thursday’s panel heard from Alon Raphael, CEO of FemtoMetrix, a company that makes a set of software tools used in the manufacture of advanced semiconductors. Raphael told the panel that in 2020, three of his company’s former employees, all Chinese nationals, “covertly absconded with thousands of files and years’ worth of proprietary information” that they used to set up a competing company called Weichong Semiconductor in mainland China.

Weichong has filed for patents in China using FemtoMetrix technology, Raphael said, and has pitched its services to his company’s existing customers, sometimes using slide decks that still contain the FemtoMetrix logo.

“Weichong is not an outlier, but an exemplar for the theft of American intellectual property,” Raphael said.

FemtoMetric has sued Weichong, Raphael said, but has little hope that a result will come quickly, or that a judgment in his company’s favor would be enforced by Chinese authorities.

“Companies like Weiching have become accustomed to exploiting the court system’s slow pace and high cost,” he said. “Alternative means of addressing such international theft are needed.”
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Since the COVID-era immigration policy known as Title 42 ended last week, the U.S. says it has sent thousands of people who have crossed into the U.S. irregularly back to Mexico or back home. But many immigrants who want to follow the rules say it is very difficult to apply for asylum. VOA’s Celia Mendoza reports. Camera: Celia Mendoza and Jesus Rosales
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The U.S. State Department on Thursday called on Iran not to carry out the possibly imminent execution of three men that Tehran arrested during anti-government protests that spread throughout the country last year following the death of a young Iranian Kurdish woman who morality police detained for improperly wearing a hijab.

The State Department told reporters that the execution of Majid Kazemi, Saleh Mirhashemi and Saeed Yaghoubi would be an affront to human rights.

On Wednesday, Amnesty International said the Iranian Supreme Court had upheld their death sentences after state media broadcast their forced “confessions” to a charge of “enmity against God.”

The three men were arrested in the city of Esfahan last November as they protested the death of Mahsa Amini, who had been arrested by the country’s morality police last September and died while in police custody.

Diana Eltahawy, Amnesty International’s deputy director for the Middle East and North Africa, said in a statement, “The shocking manner in which the trial and sentencing of these protesters was fast-tracked through Iran’s judicial system amid the use of torture-tainted ‘confessions,’ serious procedural flaws and a lack of evidence is another example of the Iranian authorities’ brazen disregard for the rights to life and fair trial.”

Amnesty International said the families of the three men were allowed to see them Wednesday but were also told it would be their last visitation with them.

Hundreds of protesters, and some Iranian security agents, have been killed in the months of demonstrations. 
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Analysts say U.S. President Joe Biden’s decision to postpone a trip to Australia is a major blow to Canberra. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will still make the trip to Australia next week, even though the Quad leaders’ summit at the Sydney Opera House has been canceled.

The White House says U.S. President Joe Biden has postponed his planned trip to Australia because of domestic debt ceiling negotiations.

Biden will, however, travel to Japan for a meeting of the Group of Seven major industrialized nations, which Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese will also attend, along with Japan’s Fumio Kishida and India’s Narendra Modi.

Albanese told reporters Wednesday that the leaders of the Quad security dialogue, including the United States, Australia, Japan and India, will meet for talks on the sidelines of the G-7 summit in Hiroshima, Japan.

“President Biden, though, indicated that he was very much looking forward to coming down at a future date when it can be arranged and I will visit the United States for a state visit later this year. All four leaders; President Biden, Prime Minister Kishida, Prime Minister Modi and myself will be at the G-7 head in Hiroshima,” he said.

The Quad summit in Sydney was to have been the first to be held in Australia.

It has now been postponed indefinitely. Analysts say the cancellation harms the grouping’s ambitions to be an influential alternative to China. They also insist it damages the reputation of the United States as a reliable ally at a time when strategic competition with China in the Indo-Pacific region is intensifying.

Ian Hall is a professor of International Relations at the Griffith Asia Institute at Griffith University. He told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. cancellation of the summit will harm the Quad’s reputation.

“The Quad’s work is going on. Officials are beavering away on Quad business all the time. But these kinds of focal points, these sorts of summits are important. They are good for, kind of, articulating what the Quad is all about, what the Quad is going to do, what its intentions are. In that sense, not having this summit I think is problematic, or at least postponing this summit is problematic,” he said.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi remains committed to traveling to Australia next week for his first trip since 2014, but his Japanese counterpart, Fumio Kishida is reportedly unlikely to travel.

Biden has also abandoned plans for a historic visit to Papua New Guinea, where he would have signed a security accord with Prime Minister James Marape.

Beijing has been critical of the Quad grouping, describing it as an “exclusive clique.”

However, despite Australia’s enthusiasm for the four-nation alliance, there are signs its recent trade and diplomatic tensions with China are continuing to ease.

Also, China’s ambassador to Canberra, Xiao Qian, said Thursday that Beijing will resume imports of Australian timber.
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More than two weeks after Jordan Neely, a 30-year-old mentally ill and homeless Black man was choked to death on the New York City subway by a former Marine, reaction to the killing has broken down along familiar political fault lines.

Daniel Penny, the 24-year-old man who placed Neely in a chokehold and was captured on video holding him for several minutes, is being widely hailed as a hero by Republican politicians in the United States, and a fund set up for his legal defense has collected more than $2.5 million and continues growing.

Many Democrats, by contrast, have argued that choking Neely to death was a criminal act that should be punished. In the eyes of many, it evoked the death of George Floyd, the Black Minneapolis man whose 2020 choking death at the hands of a white police officer was also captured on video, and energized the Black Lives Matter movement.

Penny was released in the immediate aftermath of the subway killing. Ten days later, the Manhattan district attorney charged him with second-degree manslaughter, a crime that carries a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison.

Known facts

Neely’s killing first came to the public’s notice via a cellphone recording made by a fellow passenger in the minutes before his death. When the video begins, Penny and Neely are already on the floor of the subway car, with Penny’s left arm around Neely’s throat. Two other men are attempting to restrain Neely’s arms and legs.

Penny holds him in the chokehold for several minutes as the movement of Neely’s arms and legs become feebler. At one point, another passenger warns Penny that he appears to be killing Neely. Several minutes into the video, when Penny releases Neely, the latter remains on the ground, unmoving.

Witnesses told police that in the moments before Penny placed Neely in the chokehold, Neely had been behaving erratically. He was reportedly screaming at other passengers, telling them he was hungry and thirsty and that he was ready to die.

Prosecutors said that in advance of Penny placing him in a chokehold, “Several witnesses observed Mr. Neely making threats and scaring passengers.”

However, there has been no claim that Neely actually harmed or attempted to harm anyone.

Republican reaction

In the days after Neely’s death, public reaction rapidly fractured along political lines, with conservatives praising Penny as a hero, and liberals condemning him as a vigilante.

One of Penny’s most vocal supporters has been Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who is widely expected to seek the Republican presidential nomination in 2024. DeSantis last week used his Twitter account to support Penny and attack Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, claiming the latter is funded by billionaire George Soros, long a detested target of the conservative movement who contributes to liberal causes and Democratic campaigns.

“We must defeat the Soros-Funded DAs, stop the Left’s pro-criminal agenda, and take back the streets for law abiding citizens. We stand with Good Samaritans like Daniel Penny. Let’s show this Marine … America’s got his back,” DeSantis wrote.

Nikki Haley, a declared candidate for the GOP nomination, said on Fox News Tuesday night that New York Governor Kathy Hocul should intervene in the case and pardon Penny.

“If she pardons him, that sets a right on a lot of things — it’ll put criminals on notice,” said Haley, a former governor of South Carolina who served as ambassador to the United Nations under former President Donald Trump. “And it’ll let people like Penny who really were very brave in that instance, it will let them know that we’ve got their back.”

Democratic reaction

“Black men seem to always be choked to death,” said Representative Jamaal Bowman, after the killing. “Jordan Neely did not have to die. It’s as simple as that. Yet we have another Black man publicly executed.”

Representative Maxine Waters, a long-serving California House Democrat, wrote in an essay published by the HuffPost, “Instead of being offered compassion, [Neely] was violently murdered by a vigilante who pinned him down and … choked him to death. Others aided and abetted the murder by helping to hold him down. His offense: Being hungry and homeless.”

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, in an interview with the online publication The Cut, called Neely’s death a failure of government support.

“Jordan Neely was killed by public policy. He was killed by the demonizing of the poor by many of our leaders,” she said. “He was killed by the same reluctance for people to see him as human that leaders are exhibiting right now, even in his death.”

Fits existing narratives

Regina Bateson, an associate professor in the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at Canada’s University of Ottawa, told VOA that the reaction to Neely’s killing has broken down along partisan lines because it very clearly plays into existing frames of reference.

“This incident lines up with the core interests of two very different, but very widespread social movements that are going on in the United States at the same time,” said Bateson, who has studied the political aspects of vigilantism.

“This incident lines up squarely with both the law-and-order framing that’s been adopted by the right, and the concern about racial justice, excessive use of force and civil rights that’s been adopted more on the left,” she said.

However, Bateson said it is important to understand that examples of vigilantism are often used misleadingly to suggest that the behavior being punished is more widespread than it actually is.

Neely is being portrayed by many on the right as having presented an immediate danger to other passengers on the subway, despite there being no evidence that he actually harmed or was going to harm anyone.

“Some people’s reaction to this might be to think, ‘Oh, New York is a very dangerous place. Violence is rampant in public transportation there. The state isn’t providing enough policing,'” she said.

“I think that really misses the subjectivity of vigilantism and the fact that people are responding to things that they see as an offense, but are not necessarily responding to the objective reality of the situation,” Bateson said.
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