The new congressional committee on countering the Chinese Communist Party is adopting stringent disclosure requirements intended to shed light on otherwise-hidden instances of the Chinese regime’s influence, National Review has learned.

The new rule, which will be circulated more widely among the committee’s members later today, was designed by Chairman Mike Gallagher’s team to force the committee’s future witnesses to disclose potential instances of CCP influence that might otherwise be overlooked. It will do that by compelling witnesses to reveal the funding that their employers have received from entities connected to the Chinese government — likely leading to significant revelations about foreign influence within U.S. think tanks, institutions of higher learning, and corporations.

Under typical congressional rules, witnesses must make certain disclosures, including a CV, federal contracts, and payments from foreign governments of more than $10,000 over the past three years. But the Gallagher proposal, which National Review obtained this week, far exceeds those requirements.

“This is going to be next to impossible for anyone to avoid disclosure,” said Michael Sobolik, a former Senate foreign-policy staffer who is now a fellow at the American Foreign Policy Council, after reviewing the proposal. He added that it addresses the tricky question of how to force disclosure of CCP influence over foreign actors based in China.

The rule aims to close all loopholes that may allow individuals vulnerable to CCP coercion, but not directly on the payroll of Chinese government agents and entities, to avoid scrutiny.

Companies with operations in China that have business relationships with Chinese government entities, state-owned enterprises, entities subject to the control or influence of the state and state-owned firms, or agents of any of entities that fall into any of the first three categories, are subject to the rule, according to the text. The rule also requires disclosures of in-kind contributions to witnesses’ employers by entities in each of the categories.

Though the rule was designed with China in mind, foreign adversaries cited in the rule also include Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Russia, and Venezuela.

Given the witnesses that Gallagher has talked about receiving testimony from, this will likely lead to some noteworthy revelations about American corporations’ susceptibility to Chinese government coercion. Among the committee’s future witnesses, Gallagher told radio host Hugh Hewitt in January, will be Disney CEO Bob Iger and NBA commissioner Adam Silver.

While prospective witnesses might not want to testify, in order to protect their employers, the committee can use the subpoena power to compel them to appear — and to make these disclosures. That could be particularly important when it comes to companies such as McKinsey, which has extensive business relationships with Chinese state-owned firms and government agencies but tries to maintain the confidentiality of its clients.

“It is long overdue, and the types of things that are going to be revealed through disclosure like this [are] going to shock Americans,” Sobolik told National Review, adding that because disclosure requirement is so sweeping, the committee will have to work diligently to separate instances of malign ties to the Chinese regime from more innocuous business relationships.

The Gallagher rule could lend support to efforts to push a broader overhaul of congressional disclosure requirements. Although Representative Jim Banks pushed a similar proposal to tighten disclosures for witnesses’ ties to foreign adversaries last year, the House of Representatives has not yet implemented a similarly stringent set of requirements into its rules.

The China committee’s rule also comes amid a broader effort to force agents of the Chinese regime and associated companies to come clean about their lobbying efforts on Capitol Hill. Gallagher has previously introduced legislation to close a loophole that permits Chinese firms, such as Huawei and TikTok, to register under America’s domestic lobbying law rather than under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. A bipartisan group of senators including Jim Risch, John Cornyn, and Sheldon Whitehouse introduced legislation this week to eliminate those lobbying loopholes for firms linked to China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Cuba, and Syria.