Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party

Floor Speech

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Mr. BERA. Mr. Speaker, I thank my good friend from Massachusetts (Mr. McGovern) for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to talk about the select committee on China and to support this select committee on China.

These past two Congresses I have had the privilege of being the chairman on the Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific and a senior member on the Foreign Affairs Committee. I have worked very closely with my ranking member, Steve Chabot--a good friend whom we are going to miss--but I also served as ranking member when Mr. Chabot was chairman on that committee.

We learned a lot on how we should approach China. We have looked at supply chains. We have traveled to the region. We have talked to our partners in southeast Asia and ASEAN. We have understood the vulnerabilities.

Our subcommittee had the first hearing on the novel coronavirus back in February of 2020 when we didn't have a name on it. So we understand the importance, as a doctor, of understanding the origins of COVID, where it came and how we can best prevent the next pandemic.

None of those questions are ones that we should be looking at and bickering about as Democratic or Republican questions. Those are questions that just make a lot of sense to our security, our economic strength, and where we go from here.

So I applaud the Speaker's comments on wanting this to be an American strategy, not a Democratic or Republican strategy.

If we look at our own history, what served us well in the Cold War is we had an American strategy. It didn't change every 2 years. It didn't change with the new Presidential administration. We acted on it, we laid it out there, we executed it, and we won the Cold War without going to war. That is what the challenge is that faces us today. I wish China had gone a different direction. I wish they had opened up.

I applaud the work that Mr. McGovern does on human rights and addressing the Uyghur genocide. Speaker Emerita Pelosi has been a champion on looking at the human rights abuses and the tragedy that is taking place in Tibet. Those are all issues that we should come together on, not just the United States of America, but with our allies and friends because they have the same concerns.

I don't want to say we are in a new cold war, but we are in a real challenge right now. So I support the select committee. Let's make it nonpartisan, and let's work together to create an American strategy.

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