EXPLAINED: What is ‘China Week’ at the US Congress?
2024.09.09
Washington
UPDATED at 10:20 a.m. on September 10, 2024.
The U.S. House of Representatives is aiming to introduce up to 28 bills this week that target China – touching on trade, farm ownership and electric vehicles – in what many people are calling “China Week.”
The aim, apparently, is to empower the winner of November’s presidential election to get off to a running start in Washington’s strategic rivalry with Beijing.
Speaking at a Hudson Institute event in Washington in July, House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican from Louisiana, said that one of his main goals was to have “a significant package of China related legislation signed into law by the end of this year.”
“We’ll build our sanctions package, punish the Chinese military firms that provide material support to Russia and Iran,” Johnson said, “and we’ll consider options to restrict outbound investments.”
It’s unclear which ones will make it to the floor of the House for debate – or if the Senate will even consider them. To become law, both houses of Congress need to approve bills by a majority of votes.
The president then needs to either sign the bill into law or veto it. A two-thirds majority of both houses is needed to override a veto.
What are the bills?
A laundry list of bills introduced to the House over 2023 and 2024 have been put forward for consideration, with the Republican leadership of the chamber saying they will aim to pass a bulk of the bills in a single package vote by suspending the normal rules for proceedings.
Some of the more prominent bills include:
- The Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office (HKETO) Certification Act, which would enable the president to close Hong Kong’s de facto consulates in the United States if the city’s government cannot prove its autonomy from Beijing.
- The Protect America’s Innovation and Economic Security from CCP Act, which would create a China-focussed unit within the Department of Justice’s national security division.
- The End Chinese Dominance of Electric Vehicles in America Act, which would prohibit electric cars with Chinese-made batteries or other components from eligibility for lucrative tax credits introduced by the Biden administration this year.
- The No WHO Pandemic Preparedness Treaty Without Senate Approval Act, which would require two-thirds of the Senate to approve any pandemic measures negotiated within the World Health Organization, due to fears of Chinese influence there.
- The Protecting American Agriculture from Foreign Adversaries, which would limit the ability of Chinese people and companies to purchase farmland in America, citing food security concerns.
- The DHS Restrictions on Confucius Institutes and Chinese Entities of Concern Act, which would ban funding from the Department of Homeland Security to universities and colleges that accept grants from the Chinese government.
Besides those, also apparently up for votes will be the Countering CCP Drones Act, the No Foreign Election Interference Act, the Maintaining American Superiority by Improving Export Control Transparency Act, the Economic Espionage Prevention Act, the Chinese Currency Accountability Act, and the Taiwan Conflict Deterrence Act.
In his speech in Washington, the House speaker also flagged the possibility of a bill to close the “de minimis” loophole in U.S. trade.
Critics say that the loophole enables Chinese online fashion retailers like Shein and Temu to ship clothing allegedly made with Uyghur slave labor directly to the front doors of American consumers.
However, no such legislation has yet been put on the table. A bill targeting U.S. outbound investment in China, which was also promised by Johnson in July, also does not appear to be on the agenda.
Why is it all being done in one week?
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, who is a Republican from Louisiana, told Fox News that the aim was to highlight congressional action on China, which has been a focus of the current Congress.
U.S. lawmakers from across the partisan divide have zeroed in on China as a rare area of agreement in an otherwise polarized political sphere, accusing Beijing of representing a national security threat.
“We wanted to combine them all into one week so that you had a real sharp focus on the fact that we need to be aggressive in confronting the threat that China poses,” Scalise told Fox, explaining that he hoped to attract “real bipartisan support for a number of these.”
“They're all bills that should be very bipartisan, because there are things that China is doing right now that are direct threats to our country's national security,” he said, “and if we get strong bipartisan votes, you have a higher chance of getting through the Senate.”
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Will the bills become law?
The Republicans, who control a majority of the 435 seats in the House, have the numbers alone to pass the package of “China Week” bills on their own, but even then they will likely be joined by some like-minded Democrats in sending the bills to the Senate.
However, if all the bills are passed by the end of this week, it would leave the famously slow-moving Senate only two weeks to consider them.
More importantly, the House and the Senate also have to pass a bill to fund the government after Sept. 30, which is a day after both chambers head back into a monthslong recess ahead of the Nov. 5 elections.
Democrats and Republicans are already split on the proposals to keep funding going through to next year, which – if history is any guide – will likely draw the majority of their focus over the next three weeks.
Still, some of the bills could eventually be shoehorned into the mammoth defense appropriations bill typically passed by Congress in December of each year – importantly, this year, after the elections.
What does China say?
As might be expected, Beijing isn’t terribly happy about being declared the focus of proceedings in the first week back of Congress.
Liu Pengyu, a spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, told Radio Free Asia that the pieces of legislation proposed as part of “China Week” were all politically motivated and intended to provide lawmakers with evidence of their tough stances on China.
“If passed, it will cause serious interference to China-U.S. relations and mutually beneficial cooperation, and will inevitably damage the U.S.'s own interests, image and credibility,” Liu said in an email.
“The so-called ‘China Week’ and the China-related bills are full of Cold War thinking and zero-sum game concepts, exaggerating the ‘China threat,’ inciting strategic competition and even confrontation with China, clamoring for a ‘new Cold War’ and ‘decoupling,’” he added.
“This is new McCarthyism in the U.S. Congress, manipulating China issues and hyping up Sino-U.S. relations in the U.S. election year.”
Edited by Malcolm Foster. An earlier version of this story misidentified the location of House Speaker Mike Johnson's speech in July.