[WCJ]
March 1, 2023 (EIRNS)—Congress’s new Select Committee on China rolled out its first hearing at an unusual evening primetime slot yesterday, in order to gain maximum viewership. While committee Chairman Mike Gallagher claims they are not targeting the Chinese people, but only the nefarious Chinese Communist Party (CPC). Of note, it is hard to argue that the party, with 90 million members, doesn’t have the support of China’s 1.4 billion population.
The new Committee seems to be a confabulation by the military-industrial complex to bring Congress into a more warlike stance against China (if it could become more warlike than it already is). It had the feel of something between a 1950s McCarthy hearing and the Salem Witch Trials. Moderated by Mike Gallagher (R-WI), a former Marine intelligence officer, and with witnesses consisting of former Trump National Security Adviser, Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster (ret.) and Matthew Pottinger, Trump’s “whisperer” on China policy, it had a decisively military-political air to it. Judging from the discussion, Pottinger and Gallagher knew each other from their time in the Marines, and probably worked together in choreographing this theater piece. These guys give a new meaning to the term, “jarhead” (which has been used occasionally to depict members of the U.S. Marine Corps).
Gallagher set the tone for the hearing, saying that the U.S. was involved in an “existential struggle” against China’s “ideological, technological, economic and military threat.” The committee also rolled out a gaggle of Chinese dissidents, who had suffered during the Cultural Revolution or who were at Tiananmen. Pottinger showed films of Mao and films on the starvation due to Mao’s ill-fated Great Leap Forward. He also had “cherry-picked” quotes from Xi Jinping to prove that Xi was following in the footsteps of Mao. Assuredly, there were no photos of the latest maglev vehicles or the new high-voltage electricity lines China has developed in this montage.
