China Select Committee hearing highlights partisan divide on Beijing-countering strategy

The new House China Select Committee previewed its agenda for this Congress in a prime-time evening hearing on Tuesday that revealed early partisan fault lines in the body’s legislative agenda.

The hearing — whose witnesses included former deputy national security adviser Matt Pottinger and former national security adviser H.R. McMaster — marked the climax of a full day of intensive congressional scrutiny of China through seven hearings on Tuesday.

Reps. Ro Khanna (D-Calif) and Haley Stevens (D-Mich.) called for the U.S. to develop an industrial policy that would fund the development of manufacturers to supplant China’s dominance of global supply chains in areas including the supply of semiconductors for consumer products. “It provides dividends not only to our economy, but to our national security, to invest in R&D and invest in our manufacturing sector,” Stevens said.