By Samantha Aschieris, The Daily Signal |May 25, 2023
The House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party released two reports Wednesday with numerous policy recommendations aimed at bolstering “Taiwan deterrence” and helping to stop the genocide “against the Uyghurs and other minorities” in China.
“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,” the panel’s chairman, Rep. Mike Gallagher, R-Wis., and ranking member Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, D-Ill., said in a 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 lawmakers added.
Uyghurs are a “mostly Muslim, Turkic-speaking ethnic group” that has faced detention and worse since 2017, according to the Council on Foreign Relations.
A 2019 report authored by Adrian Zenz, senior fellow and director in China studies at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, said that “up to 1.8 million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities” have been detained in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, Radio Free Asia reported.
Some of the policy recommendations released in the report about the ongoing genocide against Uyghurs and other minority groups include:
- Ensure that CCP officials face consequences for their decisions and actions resulting in genocide and crimes against humanity.
- Strengthen U.S. diplomatic efforts related to the CCP’s genocide and crimes against humanity against the Uyghurs and other Muslim and Turkic minorities.
- Strengthen enforcement of U.S. prohibitions on the importation of goods made with Uyghur forced labor.
The committee also released a report with 10 “policy recommendations to enhance Taiwan’s deterrence” against Chinese aggression. Some of the recommendations:
- Expand combined military training between the United States and Taiwan.
- Help Taiwan strengthen its cybersecurity posture.
- Enhance the cyber resiliency of U.S. critical infrastructure, especially as it relates to national defense readiness.
- Urgently provide Taiwan with essential hard power capabilities, including the military equipment and weapons it has already purchased.
- Develop joint plans with U.S. allies and partners to enact severe diplomatic and economic costs on the CCP in the event that it engages in military aggression against Taiwan.
“80,000 [Chinese People’s Liberation Army] troops on Taiwan. U.S. warplanes vaporized. Global trade frozen,” Gallagher said in the statement. “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,” Gallagher said.
Samantha Aschieris is a senior news producer for The Daily Signal.
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