Oversight committee presses federal agencies on plan to shrink China's influence

House Oversight Chair Rep. James Comer sent a letter to National Security Council Advisor Jake Sullivan to find out what is being done to end the Chinese Communist Party’s influence in the U.S.

Comer has been pressing federal agencies for months to identify CCP influence and root it out. He argues that the Biden administration is not taking the threat seriously enough, even as U.S. Generals, intelligence officials, and national security experts raise the alarm about China’s efforts to undermine, steal from, and influence the U.S. here at home.

“The investigation has made one thing particularly clear: our country is in urgent need of a cohesive government-wide strategy to identify, counter, and defeat CCP unrestricted warfare,” Comer wrote. “As detailed below, this warfare is designed to weaken and defeat our country.”

Comer has sent letters to an array of federal agencies calling on them to do the same and has continued to expose instances of CCP influence. He argues that Sullivan is well-positioned to lead this effort but that so far the NSC has not taken the problem seriously enough.

Experts have documented that China has a thorough, long-term strategy to systematically weaken and replace the U.S. on every front: economically, militarily, technologically, geopolitically, etc.

For instance, China has long stolen U.S. intellectual property, including military technology, with the U.S. government estimating the cost to America is to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars.

The Chinese government has also carried out a nationwide effort to influence U.S. higher education through funding top universities and sponsoring Confucius Institutes at schools, though those have mostly been shut down over concerns about national security, among other reasons.

The National Association of Scholars, though, says those institutions have been reopening with different branding.

“Yet the Committee’s investigation has uncovered that very few federal officials recognize, understand, or have a strategy to safeguard America from CCP infiltration and influence,” the letter said. “On the contrary, many federal officials are unaware of the CCP’s decades-long unrestricted warfare campaign, minimize the threat, and reflexively excuse CCP activity threatening the security and prosperity of communities across our country.”