(CNSNews.com) - The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) wants to reunify Taiwan using psychological and political warfare as well as economic coercion, which Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen has been warning about, Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.), chairman of the House Select Committee on China, said on Sunday.
“Clearly, the Chinese Communist Party is trying to intimidate us. They're trying to bully us. They're massive bullies on the world stage. They would like to reunify Taiwan with the mainland, by force, if necessary,” Gallagher told Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures.”
“Xi Jinping keeps saying this, and a lot of people in the elite Wall Street world, in the elite big tech world, in the elite Hollywood world keep discounting it, despite the fact that he keeps saying it, but, of course, Xi Jinping would love to achieve that reunification without force if possible, and the way to do that is through psychological warfare,” he said.
“It's through economic coercion. It's through political warfare, and that's really what President Tsai of Taiwan has been warning us about. It's what she calls cognitive warfare,” the congressman said.
“So it's important for the American people not to be intimidated. and the fact that the Chinese were throwing a temper tantrum about the speaker of the House meeting with the democratically elected leader of Taiwan on American soil just shows you how sensitive they are,” Gallagher said.
“We need not to back down. We need to stand up for freedom, and we need to support our friends in Taiwan, specifically by giving them the weapons that they have purchased from us, which have been backlogged. We have a $19 billion backlog of weapons. That's unacceptable, Sean,” he said.
“We need to be moving heaven and earth to surge power out to the Indo- Pacific before it's too late, before we have another war on our hands,” the congressman added.
Asked what more can be done to make sure those weapons get to Taiwan so they can defend themselves against a Chinese attack, Gallagher said, “I think, if you look at the $19 billion, there's many different items involved in that. I think the Harpoon anti-ship missiles are the most important.
“I remain convinced that there's more we can do to move Taiwan to the front of the line, ahead of Saudi Arabia, for example, when it comes to Harpoon deliveries, as well as take the Harpoon missiles that we're putting into deep storage, that we're de-milling, and change around a few aspects of them so that we can deliver them to Taiwan,” the congressman said.
“We could also explore licensing certain weapons systems so the Taiwanese could produce them domestically, but, at the end of the day, it just comes down to energy and focus and prioritization from the executive branch,” he said.
“We need the secretary of defense himself to get involved, to make this a daily priority for the backlog to get cleared, and I have seen no evidence of that from the Biden administration thus far,” Gallagher said.
The congressman warned that the CCP bribes people to do their bidding as evidenced by them paying people $400 each through something called United Front Work to protest at the Ronald Reagan ranch to try to show that people organically opposed House Speaker Kevin McCarthy meeting with the president of Taiwan.
“Yes, this is a perfect microcosm of the way the Chinese Communist Party operates through something called United Front Work. They basically bribe people on American soil to do their bidding. We have seen this in industry after industry. We have seen this in higher education,” Gallagher said.
“We have seen it in Wall Street. We have seen it in a variety of domestic institutions that have been corrupted by the Chinese Communist Party and by economic incentives. So, we have -- in many cases, we have become addicted to access to the Chinese market, and so, luckily, those protesters didn't disrupt the actual event,” he said.
“The event was a very positive one. It was a bipartisan event. We had legislators on both sides of the aisle. Speaker McCarthy did a fantastic job standing up to CCP coercion, and, again, it gets back to the basic point. We can't allow ourselves to be intimidated by these United Front Work tactics,” the congressman said.
“It's just -- it's not going to work here in America. That's the message we need to send. The other thing, Sean, it's further evidence that this isn't just an over-there threat. This is a right-here-at-home threat,” Gallagher said.