A jogger runs by the U.S. Capitol as the deadline to avert a partial government shutdown approaches at the end of the day on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., September 30, 2023.
Ken Cedeno | Reuters
BEIJING — The U.S. Congress increasingly has its eye on American capital that’s allegedly funded China’s military development, indicating that greater scrutiny on U.S. investments into China may outlast presidential terms and become part of law.
After a few false starts in 2023 that never ended up blocking U.S. investments into certain Chinese industries, some in the House of Representatives are still pushing ahead.
“I do think Congress needs to step up and legislate an enduring solution to this problem, because otherwise, we’re going to ping pong back and forth between different administrations and different executive orders, or different regulators saying different things,” Mike Gallagher, chairman of the House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party, said in a statement to CNBC this week.
“I think, at least in advanced technology sectors, we need to cut off the flow of funds. We can’t afford to keep funding our own destruction,” said Gallagher, who is also chairman of the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Cyber, Information Technologies, and Innovation, and on the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.
The House Select Committee on the CCP, established in January last year, led the legislative act to essentially ban TikTok in the U.S. if its Chinese parent ByteDance doesn’t sell the popular social media app. The bill passed the House last week, and now must pass the Senate if it is to become law.
The House select committee in February also published a report alleging U.S. venture capital firms invested billions “into PRC companies fueling the CCP’s military, surveillance state and Uyghur genocide.”
It is unclear how aware U.S. firms were of such links, if any. Beijing has denied accusations of…
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