Chinese Communist Party adversarial entity for its people, many nations: U.S. Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi

U.S. Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi’s comments on ‘Chinese threats’ comes days after U.S. fighter jets shot down a Chinese surveillance balloon.

U.S. Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi. File photo | Photo Credit: Reuters

The Chinese Communist Party has become an "adversarial entity" for many nations as well as for its own people, U.S. Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi said Wednesday, February 8, 2023.

He noted the challenge is to make it clear to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) that its repeated violation of international law and the sovereignty of others is unacceptable.

Days after U.S. fighter jets shot down a Chinese surveillance balloon, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken claimed that China has "violated the sovereignty" of not just the United States but of countries across five continents.

The balloon was shot down on Saturday off the coast of South Carolina in the Atlantic Ocean. It had hovered over continental America for several days after entering the U.S. airspace on January 30 in Montana.

China has acknowledged that the ballon was theirs but denied that it was for surveillance purposes rather for weather monitoring and that it had drifted off course.

"We can't tolerate this. We have to make sure that we continue to send clear messages (to CCP) and at the same time prepare and deter aggression," Mr. Krishnamoorthi said soon after the first meeting of the newly created House Committee on China, of which he is the Ranking Member.

The China committee has been set up by Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy to study the challenges – economic, technological, and security – that the Chinese Communist Party poses for the United States, and how to deal with them.

Mr. Krishnamoorthi, 49, represents the eighth Congressional District of Illinois. Being a Ranking Member of the powerful China Committee and a member of the House Select Intelligence Committee, the Indian American has emerged as one of the powerful Democratic lawmakers in the US Congress.

This is for the first time that any Indian American has ever been named a Ranking Member or a Chair of a committee, a standing committee in the House or the Senate, or a select committee. "I feel very honoured to have received that particular assignment," he said.

"The Chinese Communist Party has become an adversarial entity concerning a lot of nations as well as people. I would argue it is adversarial for its own people, to the extent that it continues to suppress human rights (and) dissent," Mr. Krishnamoorthi said.

During the first meeting here on Wednesday, the House China Committee members got to know each other and got a rough sense of where they go from here. "I think that we will have a decent pace in terms of hearings, briefings, and other activities to make sure that we can fulfil our mission," Krishnamoorthi said.

Responding to a question on the Chinese surveillance balloon that was shot down by the U.S. last Saturday, Mr. Krishnamoorthi said it shows that the Chinese Communist Party poses a threat and a challenge.

"The threat is they conduct surveillance all over the world, and of course, in the United States, and they brazenly did so violating American sovereignty, and everybody in the world could see this," he said.

"The challenge is how do we draw red lines? How do we make it clear to the Chinese Communist Party that that type of behaviour is unacceptable and instead correct their path.

"We see what they do in their own neighbourhood, throwing elbows at Taiwan, throwing their elbows in the South China Sea, throwing their elbows at India. We can't tolerate that," Mr. Krishnamoorthi said.

Acknowledging that the U.S.-China relationship is "slightly tense", he hoped that it can be de-escalated. "But for that to happen, the Chinese Communist Party needs to ratchet down its rhetoric, ratchet down its activities, and start abiding by more international rules-based protocols and laws. That's really important going forward," he asserted.

QUAD’s significance

According to Mr. Krishnamoorthi, Quad – the grouping of Australia, India, Japan and the United States – is very important for regional security and regional partnerships.

"But we also have to work in other ways such as in bilateral fashion to make sure that our partners and friends and allies in the region are supplied with what it takes to defend themselves sufficiently against the CCP threat," he said.

"I think it's so important that these different entities be able to deter aggression. We don't want to see what happened in Ukraine to happen with Taiwan, for instance. We can't have another criminal invasion of another country and a brazen violation of its sovereignty with all the massive destruction that entails," the Indian American Congressman said.

India, he said, has done a lot on its own in addressing the Chinese challenge.

"I think the Biden administration should continue to encourage India as well as all members of the Quad and other regional partners to be ready for a time when we have to deter aggression. That is the most important thing," Mr. Krishnamoorthi said.

"You can't just respond on the minute that it happens and expect some kind of miraculous kind of recovery from years of inaction. So, it's very important right now to do two things.

"One is to prepare, which means undertaking the reforms necessary to have the defence and economic infrastructure to ward off Chinese, or CCP aggression. The other is to make sure it unifies its country in whatever way possible for the challenge," he added.