Artillery Heading to the China Financial Front
As we noted last week, the House Financial Services Committee plans a wide-ranging hearing on Tuesday establishing a legislative history for seventeen bills that would in one way or another attack China by limiting its access to U.S. and global financial markets. The hearing comes at a time of tensions heightened first by alarming memos from senior U.S. military commanders and then reports of a Chinese espionage balloon surveilling key U.S. facilities. It also comes in concert with creation of a House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party designed to hold hearings and recommend U.S. policy across the financial, military, trade, and intelligence arenas in which Republicans believe China is already engaging in “soft” warfare against Taiwan and the U.S. So far, the HFSC hearing features only private-sector witnesses and the bills we have seen so far generally carving a careful path between harsh words about China and mandatory actions with minimal adverse consequences to the flow of finance, goods, and even diplomacy.