WASHINGTON — U.S. Senator Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, delivered the following opening remarks at this morning’s full Committee hearing on advancing effective United States policy for strategic competition with China in the twenty-first century. Testifying before the Committee were Dr. Elizabeth Economy, Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, Tom Shugart, Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Center for New American Security, and Saif Khan, Research Fellow at the Center for Security and Emerging Technology.
“China today is challenging the United States and destabilizing the international community across every dimension of power – political, diplomatic, economic, innovation, military, and even cultural – and with an alternative and deeply disturbing model for global governance,” Chairman Menendez said. “We need to be clear-eyed and sober about Beijing’s intentions and actions, and calibrate our policy and strategy accordingly. The United States needs a new strategic framework for this competition and a new set of organizing principles to address the challenges of this new era.
Chairman Menendez also provided an update for his ongoing effort to author comprehensive and bipartisan legislation that establishes a new U.S.-China, stating: “I appreciate that the Ranking Member has stated his desire to join forces to draft and markup a strong bipartisan China bill. To accommodate his request for more time to achieve this shared objective, I have agreed to move the markup to April 14, but we will have to work during the recess to have the text finished and available to other committee members by the end of this work period. My expectation is that the text will be representative of the shared bipartisan space on China, and members will also have opportunities to shape the bill through the amendment process.”
Below are Chairman Menendez’s remarks as delivered:
“Dr. Economy, Mr. Shugart, and Mr. Khan, thank you for joining us here this morning to explore one of the more consequential questions this Committee will consider this year: How to develop an ‘effective’ strategy to counter and manage the rise of China.
The China of 2021 is not the China of 1971 or even the China of 2011. China today is challenging the United States and destabilizing the international community across every dimension of power – political, diplomatic, economic, innovation, military, and even cultural – and with an alternative and deeply disturbing model for global governance.
As I said before, I truly believe that China today, led by the Communist Party and propelled by Xi Jinping’s hyper-nationalism, is unlike any challenge we have faced before as a nation.
For decades, we have failed to comprehensively address China’s growing reach. And while I have given the previous administration credit for getting the scope, scale and urgency of the China challenge right, they seemed to operate under the mistaken belief that just being confrontational was being the same thing as being competitive.
Retrenchment from the global stage, withdrawing from international fora only to let China fill in the void, alienating our allies and partners, particularly in the region, only helped embolden China’s efforts. Coercing its neighbors in the maritime domain, crushing Hong Kong, threatening Taiwan, increasing its trade surplus with the United States, racing ahead in the development of new digital technologies, a campaign of genocide on its Uyghur people – China today is more active and more assertive than ever before.
There should be little doubt in my mind that the right basic framework for thinking about our relationship with China today is ‘strategic competition’ – not because that is necessarily what we want – but because of the choices Beijing is making. We need to be clear-eyed and sober about Beijing’s intentions and actions, and calibrate our policy and strategy accordingly. The United States needs a new strategic framework for this competition and a new set of organizing principles to address the challenges of this new era.
One of these core organizing principles, I would suggest, is the importance of coordinating closely with our allies and partners to develop a shared and effective approach to China. Indeed, I think Secretaries Blinken and Austin have successfully started embracing this principle with their trip this week; and I believe that our China policy must be integral as we develop Indo-Pacific strategy. So I’m pleased to see that President Biden understands that our alliances, our partnerships and the shared values on which they stand – and our reliability and resilience in the face of adversity – are crucial for effective global leadership.
Second, as we consider strategic competition with China we must recognize that in the twenty-first century the nature of our competition also revolves around geo-economic matters, not just the geo-political and military competition that characterized the twentieth century. The most hotly contested domains are in the new and emergent suite of technologies – 5G, AI, quantum computing, nanotech, robotics, zero-carbon energy technology – not just the traditional categories of blood and steel that have traditionally guided our national security thinking.
If we fail to invest in our geo-economic tools – if we fail to replenish the sources of our competitiveness here at home – we will find that while we still may dominate in the ‘old’ domains in traditional measures of military power, the world has moved on and we will be left behind.
Successfully doing so requires significant bipartisan political efforts. To that end, I appreciate that the Ranking Member has stated his desire to join forces to draft and markup a strong bipartisan China bill. To accommodate his request for more time to achieve this shared objective, I have agreed to move the markup to April 14, but we will have to work during the recess to have the text finished and available to other committee members by the end of this work period. My expectation is that the text will be representative of the shared bipartisan space on China, and members will also have opportunities to shape the bill through the amendment process.
Both he and I – and many members of this committee – have introduced bills and issued reports over the past several years addressing various aspects of this challenge. Now we need to act and adopt a comprehensive bipartisan bill that can provide a sustainable and durable framework for the years ahead.
So I look forward to the opportunity to engage with our witnesses today in a genuine and substantive conversation about how we can work together to develop a comprehensive approach and strategy towards China, to reset our strategy and diplomacy, to reinvest and replenish the sources of our national strength and competitiveness at home, to place our partnerships and allies first. And that reflects our fundamental values as Americans.
Let me turn to the distinguished Ranking Member, Senator Risch, for his opening statement.”
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