The House Select Committee on the Chinese Community Party unanimously adopted two policy recommendations for the Biden administration regarding its work to uncover the Uyghur genocide and defend Taiwan.
The proposals, which lawmakers voted in favor of on Wednesday, act as summations and recommendations following months of work, which included hearings on the persecution and killing of Uyghurs in China and a tabletop exercise on how the United States should respond if the Chinese military tries to take Taiwan by force.
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"The competition with the CCP requires us working together across the aisle, and we are proud that today we voted overwhelmingly to adopt the Select Committee’s first policy recommendations regarding the Uyghur genocide and Taiwan," Chairman Mike Gallagher (R-WI) and Ranking Member Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL) said in a joint statement. "This is only a first step, and we will continue operating in a bipartisan way to send a message that we are committed to deterrence in the Taiwan Strait and that we won’t turn a blind eye as the CCP commits genocide, 'the crime above all crimes,' against the Uyghur people.”
The U.S. military needs additional long-range missiles and unmanned vehicles in the Indo-Pacific region and should use multi-year procurements to increase these stockpiles, the committee recommends, also urging the administration to better coordinate with allies on planning for how to deter or respond diplomatically and economically to a crisis in Taiwan. They also urge the U.S. to provide Taiwan with military equipment and weapons while expanding the combined military training between them.
During the committee’s tabletop exercise in April, the U.S. ran out of its critical munitions and ran low on all precision-guided missiles within a week, prompting some of the recommendations.
"80,000 PLA troops on Taiwan. U.S. warplanes vaporized," Gallagher said. "Global trade frozen. At the Select Committee’s war game, members saw the terrifying result of what happens when deterrence fails. To ensure this scenario remains fictional, today Select Committee members voted to overwhelmingly adopt 10 policy recommendations that can pass in this Congress, which will surge hard power across the international dateline and strengthen deterrence in the Taiwan Strait.”
Beijing has increased its aggressive maneuvers toward Taiwan, often using perceived slights by the U.S. as apparent justification for these military exercises. In recent months, Chinese officials have rebuffed efforts from their U.S. counterparts for communication following the spy balloon that traversed the continental U.S. from west to east before the military shot it down.
Chinese leaders have publicly said they want the military to be prepared to invade Taiwan by 2027, though U.S. officials have said they don't believe conflict is inevitable. Specifically, Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said last month it was his belief that Chinese leaders believe conflict with the U.S. is "inevitable," even though he does not believe that or that a war between them is "imminent."
In the other policy proposal, about the Uyghurs, the committee recommended the administration ensure Chinese Communist Party officials are held accountable for their actions against the Muslim minority. The committee also recommends strengthening diplomatic efforts and enforcing U.S. prohibitions on the importation of goods made with forced Uyghur labor.
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A United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights report from September found that “serious human rights violations have been committed” in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region under the government’s guise of a counterterrorism strategy. Specifically, they found that China’s “anti-terrorism law system” is “deeply problematic from the perspective of international human rights norms and standards” because it “has in practice led to the large-scale arbitrary deprivation of liberty of Uyghurs and other predominantly Muslim communities."
At a hearing in March, the committee heard from two eyewitnesses of the internment camps in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR).