Winning the Cold War against the Soviet Union required a five-decade effort by America to design, implement and sustain a national grand strategy, allied consensus, and public support — first to contain the threat and under Ronald Reagan, ultimately to defeat it. 

From the start, the existential nature of the Soviet threat to America and to freedom everywhere was understood to require commitment to superior American military, technological, economic, diplomatic, and informational power, and purpose-built institutions and frameworks, both at home and globally.   

Again in control of the House of Representatives, Republicans are now rising to meet a much more powerful threat: the Chinese Communist Party — a regime avowedly seeking military superiority over America and Asia by 2035, and globally and in space, by 2049, its 100th anniversary.

On three levels, the Republican-led House is challenging the Biden Administration to rise to a much greater level of awareness and action to defend against the Chinese communist regime.  

First, Congressman Kevin McCarthy — before his election as Speaker — announced on November 20 that he would form a “select committee on China,” specifically citing the Democrats’ failure to initiate any hearings of the origins of Covid.  

Called an innocuous name in an attempt by liberals to avoid offending the Chinese state, Covid has killed 1.11 million Americans and over 6.7 million worldwide — another herald of the Chinese Communist Party’s “unrestricted warfare” approach. 

On January 10, in a 365 to 65 vote, the House formed its Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the U.S. and the Chinese Communist Party.  With 16 bipartisan Members, it will be chaired by a Marine Corps intelligence veteran, Congressman Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin, a Republican leader on China’s threats.  

Mr. Gallagher said his committee will look at “how we got China wrong” and examine China’s “coordinated whole of society strategy to undermine American leadership and American sovereignty, while working on a bipartisan basis and with committees of jurisdiction to look at long overdue commonsense approaches to counter” Chinese Communist Party “aggressions.” 

Mr. Gallagher also called China’s Communist Party “the greatest threat to the United States, noting that it “continues to commit genocide, obscure the origins of the coronavirus pandemic, steal hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of American intellectual property, and threaten Taiwan.  The Select Committee on China will push back in bipartisan fashion before it’s too late.”

The last House Select Committee to examine challenges from China, in 1999, was led by Congressman Christopher Cox and helped to expose China’s egregious espionage and theft of U.S. nuclear weapon secrets and missile technology.  

Second, the House is set to expose the Chinese Communist Party’s corruption of American politics, which is also a global scourge for the democracies; this will include Congressman James Comer’s Oversight Committee’s investigations into the shady Chinese business dealings of Hunter Biden and family.      

Expect this to extend to the party’s role in facilitating funding for the University of Pennsylvania’s Biden Center holding tank created for then Vice President Biden after the 2016 election.   

Third, the House will challenge the Chinese Communist regime by defending America’s  interest in preserving a free democratic Taiwan, made possible by the bipartisan 1979 Taiwan Relations Act that followed President Carter’s derecognition of the Republic of China on Taiwan.  

China’s dictator, Xi Jinping, hopes to preserve his party’s dictatorship and advance its drive for global hegemony by first waging war to destroy Taiwan’s democracy. 

Every day America supports a free Taiwan it undermines the Chinese Communist dictatorship’s political legitimacy, reassures our Asian allies and friends, and delays the party’s drive for hegemony.   

China and the Biden Administration are very concerned about any visit to Taiwan by Speaker McCarthy, who in July said he would visit like his predecessor Speaker Pelosi. In August he criticized the Biden Administration for showing “weakness” on China by opposing Mrs. Pelosi’s visit.  

China used Mrs. Pelosi’s visit to unleash unprecedented joint-force air, naval, and missile exercises simulating a blockade of the island, required for successful invasion, and Chinese state media serially features threats to undertake a greater response if Speaker McCarthy’s visits the island democracy.   

To ensure the freedom of a co-equal branch, and underscore to Mr. Xi, and our allies, America’s will to defend Taiwan, Mr. Biden should support and defend militarily Mr. McCarthy’s Taiwan visit. The GOP might call it “strategic constancy.”