Just three of Congress’ record 238 bills targeting Beijing in 2021 passed both chambers, with key legislation languishing in committees.
Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle ramped up tough-on-China rhetoric this year and introduced a slew of bills aimed at reducing U.S. reliance on Chinese goods, countering Beijing’s military aggression in the Pacific and bolstering the U.S. commitment to Taiwan.
Almost nothing reached President Biden’s desk.
“Across the U.S. political spectrum, there is agreement that China is a threat. … But there’s no agreement on what to do about it,” said Gordon Chang, a conservative critic of China and author of “The Great U.S.-China Tech War.”
Indeed, tough-on-China rhetoric has emerged as a rare unifier on Capitol Hill.
Since 2018, the number of bills aimed at countering Beijing skyrocketed. Between 2010 and 2018, lawmakers introduced on average 45 bills per year that contained China or Taiwan as the main legislative subject as assigned by the Library of Congress.
Last Congress, which spanned 2019 and 2020, lawmakers introduced a total of 379 measures with the same legislative subject terms.
This year alone — halfway through the 117th Congress — lawmakers have introduced 238 bills aimed at China, but both chambers hit a wall when it came to moving the legislation over the finish line.
Of the measures introduced in the previous Congress, 14 became law.
One of the most significant measures targeting China this year — the diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Winter Olympics — was achieved through executive action by Mr. Biden, though spurred by calls from lawmakers.
The White House cited the communist government’s ongoing persecution of Uyghur Muslims in China‘s Xinjiang region.
Australia, Canada and the U.K. have joined the U.S. in officially shunning the games. Japan announced that it will not send an official delegation but stopped short of announcing a full diplomatic boycott.
The rebuke, however, was purely symbolic.
When it comes to legislative action to counter Beijing — whether it is trade abuses, theft of U.S. intellectual property, the dominance of high-tech manufacturing or the growing military threat — Congress remains mostly gridlocked.
“There is a failure to perceive the situation,” Mr. Chang said. “Both houses should believe that we’ve got one problem right now that is overarching, and that makes other problems minor in comparison.”
Republicans blame Congress’ Democratic majorities for the holdup this year.
Sen. Bill Hagerty said the Democratic leaders’ priorities play into China’s hands.
“As our strategic adversary, Communist China presents the gravest national security threat to the United States in the 21st century,” said the Tennessee Republican. “It’s unfortunate that Speaker [Nancy] Pelosi and Leader [Charles E.] Schumer have prioritized their big-government socialism bills that would cripple our economy, destroy the fossil fuel industry, and have China laughing all the way to the bank, instead of prioritizing bipartisan legislation that truly can help the United States meet the China challenge.”
Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Robert Menendez, New Jersey Democrat, pushed back against the criticism.
He said the U.S. Innovation and Competition Act (USICA), which contains several measures to make bolster competition with China, was “one of the first orders of business this session of Congress.”
“It seems to me that it did receive not only a high priority by putting it out but also widespread bipartisan support, which is incredibly important particularly in sending a message to China that it is a united front view,” he said.
However, the USICA bill hasn’t won final approval from Congress.
For months, both chambers have toiled with separate versions of legislation that combines a wide swath of tough-on-China measures put forward by lawmakers.
In June, the Senate passed the $250 billion USICA, which combined several bills into a 2,276 page China catchall. Eighteen Republicans and all 50 Democrats voted in favor of the bill.
The House version, on the other hand, has been plagued by months of stalled negotiations.
Last month, Mr. Schumer of New York and Mrs. Pelosi of California announced that the two chambers had begun the process of smoothing out differences between the two bills. They vowed to “deliver a final piece of legislation to the president’s desk as soon as possible.”
Few signs of progress have emerged as party leaders have had to scramble to avoid a government shutdown, raise the debt ceiling and move on Mr. Biden’s social welfare spending package before year-end.
Hashing out the differences between the two versions could take months.
Despite the stalled progress on the bills, Congress’ hard-line stance toward China has not gone unnoticed by Beijing. And any new legislation is sure to face an onslaught of pushback.
Last month, Reuters reported that officials from China’s embassy in Washington sent letters to U.S. executives and business groups pressuring them to lobby against bills being floated in Congress to boost U.S. competitiveness against China.
The letters warned that U.S. companies would lose market share in China should those bills become law.
The three bills that did pass both chambers in 2021 went after Chinese tech, bolstered U.S. military posture in the Pacific and restricted imports of products made with Chinese forced labor.
The House and Senate also approved some resolutions in 2021 that expressed the sense or opinion of one of the chambers but did not set policy or trigger government action.
The House passed two resolutions, one condemning the genocide against Uyghur Muslims and another condemning the Chinese Communist Party’s crackdown in Hong Kong. The Senate passed one resolution expressing the need to conduct a comprehensive investigation into the origins of COVID-19.
