China Task Force Issues Key Report

The China Task Force was created to establish a multi-agency examination of the threat posed by China. We have a copy of its Final Report, and summarize it here.

Since the establishment of diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) more than 40 years ago, the United States has sought to draw the PRC into the community of nations as a responsible stakeholder. U.S. leaders pursued a strategy of engagement based on the assumption that expanding the bilateral economic relationship with the PRC would advance the U.S. national interest and lead the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to change. This engagement strategy often turned a blind eye to the CCP’s human rights violations, economic malfeasance, expansionist aggression, and empty promises, as well as the CCP’s deep commitment to a hostile Communist ideology that drives this malign behavior. This strategy has, simply put, failed.

In just the past year alone, the CCP has violated an international treaty and dismantled Hong Kong’s civil liberties; continued its oppression of ethnic minorities, including Uyghurs and Tibetans; increased its military buildup, conducted increasingly belligerent provocations, and violated other nations’ sovereignty at sea; engaged in fatal skirmishes to conduct a land-grab on the Indian border; and asserted new territorial claims over Bhutan. Moreover, by silencing doctors and suppressing medical information from the world, the CCP allowed a local outbreak of a virus to turn into a global pandemic, killing almost one million people to date and devastating the global economy. This pandemic exposed various U.S. supply chain vulnerabilities, the dangers of U.S. overreliance on the PRC, and the need for a more robust domestic medical and technological manufacturing capacity.

This series of wakeup calls has revealed how CCP ideology is undermining the core principles of the international system and putting Americans’ safety and prosperity at risk. Leniency and accommodation of the CCP and its oppressive agenda is no longer an option. To preserve democracy and freedom around the world, the U.S. must act decisively with our allies to regain the initiative. Addressing such malign conduct can no longer be one of many priorities for our respective governments, but rather the organizing principle of the free world.

Assessing the Chinese Communist Party Threat

Recognizing the urgency and magnitude of the CCP’s threat to American values and interests, Republican leaders in the U.S. House of Representatives set out to develop a policy action plan for Congress and the Administration to better combat this multifaceted challenge. Despite numerous and repeated invitations over a series of months, House Democrats refused to join or contribute to this vital effort. The GOP had no choice but to move forward independently due to the exigency of the threat. Fifteen Members representing 11 Committees addressed the U.S. strategic competition with the CCP by focusing on: Ideological Competition, Supply Chain, National Security, Technology, Economics and Energy, and Competitiveness.

Key CTF Recommendations Include:

Ideological Competition

• Evaluating whether the CCP’s crimes against Uyghurs amount to genocide, fully implementing sanctions laws enacted in response to the CCP’s Hong Kong crackdown, and taking further specific actions to respond to the full range of CCP human rights violations, from religious freedom violations to forced organ harvesting

• Coordinating a whole-of-government offensive information statecraft campaign to counter the CCP’s propaganda machine by using truth and our values to undermine CCP’s lies and malign ideology

• Ensuring our citizens are aware when they are watching or listening to CCP sponsored and censored media

• Coordinating a whole-of-government offensive information statecraft campaign to counter the CCP’s propaganda machine by using truth and our values to undermine CCP’s lies and malign ideology

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• Ensuring our citizens are aware when they are watching or listening to CCP sponsored and censored media and entertainment content

• Countering the CCP’s global malign influence by requiring transparency and accountability within the United Nations system, including at the World Health Organization

• Funding technologies and the distribution of devices that help democracy fighters maintain digital security, ensure mobile access, and reconstitute websites after a cyberattack

• Highlighting the CCP’s rampant environmental destruction, including its status as the world’s largest carbon emitter

Supply Chain

Better securing our medical and national security supply chains by:

• Providing aggressive, smart, and targeted

tax incentives to accelerate our research and development (R&D) and production of crucial medicines, medical supplies, ingredients, tests, and vaccines;

• Creating a grant program necessary to catalyze domestic production of important technologies and designing tax incentives to secure U.S. supply of advanced semiconductors; and

• Overhauling the federal permitting process for mineral development and prioritizing advancements in mineral refining so neither industry nor the Defense Industrial Base are reliant on the CCP.

The Report concludes tomorrow

Photo: President Xj Jingping (Xinghua News Agency)

Quick Analysis

Ukraine’s Frozen Conflict

As we approach winter in the northern hemisphere, the war in Ukraine is beginning to resemble a “frozen conflict” from many perspectives. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky recently told the media he hopes the war will end faster once President-elect Trump takes over in January. Opinions in Moscow, however, differ from that of the Ukrainian leader. Russian President Vladimir Putin argues that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) needs to exclude Ukraine from joining in “exchange” for peace. If it does not, he says, then no end to the war is in sight. So far there is no Christmas solution. Several NATO countries, according to Vladimir Socor of the Jamestown Foundation, are tentatively considering “coalitions-of-the-willing” to provide security for Ukraine outside of the formal NATO framework. There is, however, no collective mechanism today under which such an arrangement is viable. According to the NATO Charter, while Ukraine is a NATO partner country, it may not join as a full member since it has not fulfilled the requirements for membership. That has not stopped NATO and allies from continuing “to provide Ukraine with unprecedented levels of support, helping to uphold its fundamental right to self-defence,” according to the organization. Socor says that keeping Ukraine out of NATO will not advance peace with Russia. Waiting for a peace settlement, he suggests, would only serve to encourage Moscow to continue the war indefinitely. Although the Biden Administration officially withdrew its support for Ukrainian membership in 2021, NATO maintains an “open door” policy toward membership-seeking countries. The current White House position led the way for European states to oppose Ukraine’s membership saying that a decision should be delayed until “conditions are met.” Biden pushed for changing “open door” to a “bridge” metaphor. It is not intended as an across-the-board NATO policy and has been implemented in the past on a case-by-case basis, says Socor. “The alliance’s open-door policy was not fully insulated from Russia’s non-statutory blocking power, and NATO-aspirant countries’ path toward membership was not always irreversible.” Russia has successfully blocked states like Georgia from joining, first in 2008 and again after the war in Ukraine began in 2014. Russia recognizes the value add of Ukraine to NATO is enormous and that Kyiv has a better case than some other nations. Putin’s invasion was, in part, intended to foreclose that option. By 2021, Moscow was pushing hard to maximize its war objectives, which included further annexations of Ukrainian territory. A main goal for Putin was, and is, to ensure there is no Ukraine left to join NATO. As President-elect Trump prepares to assume office in January, he is faced with the historical challenges presented by the war. Post-conflict security guarantees were the center of several proposals made during the 2023 military stalemate. The incoming Trump Administration has yet to outline how it intends to handle the Russia-Ukraine war. Analysts in Washington believe that the new Administration will expect its European allies to guarantee the majority of Ukraine’s security needs. As we approach 2025, several European nations have acknowledged that they do not view Ukraine as eligible for NATO membership as it would draw the organization into the middle of the conflict. Others want to wait until the war is over or pending a “peace” settlement before considering Ukrainian membership. Socor reports that some “influential voices” are suggesting that “Kyiv should join NATO after “freezing” the war along a stable armistice line, de facto accepting Ukraine’s partition, with NATO security guarantees applying de jure to the government-controlled territory only.” This would mean starting accession talks soon with the actual talks to commence only after a ceasefire is in place. Trump arrives in Washington at a time when Putin’s hybrid strategies of war in Ukraine have eviscerated commonly-held differences between war and peace. “Absent a political consensus in NATO over Ukrainian membership, certain European allies, including France’s President Emmanuel Macron, are holding informal consultations about post-conflict security guarantees to Kyiv by NATO members outside of NATO’s framework,” according to the Jamestown Foundation. The Biden Administration downplayed the discussions on possible forms of military assistance and defense industry cooperation by sending only an Assistant Secretary of State. For a European peace to hold the Trump Administration would need to formally extend the United States’ nuclear deterrence to Ukraine. Options under discussion in Europe include a “coalition of the resolute” to deploy forces to Ukraine as part of a possible armistice package, deterring further Russian attacks, says Secor. European officials are also debating, without any agreement, whether its military forces could perform non-combat logistical roles to free Ukrainian forces to fight. None of the possible courses of action has moved forward as all eyes are waiting on the incoming Trump Administration for clues about its intended level of support for a NATO framework and other non-NATO proposals. Daria Novak served in the U.S. State Dept.