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committee and the threats posed by china. just a little bit of what he had to say. >> we see in the aggression here at home where the party has stolen intellectual property, technology and industrial capacity, undermining our economy and good paying american jobs. it is here at home where the party's extraterritorial totalitarianism terrorizes chinese students studying at our universities and targets americans of chinese descent. and it is here at home where thousands of americans are poisoned each year by fentanyl precursors manufactured in china andin distributed to a complex chinese a money-laundering network. it is time to understand the urgency of the threat, it is time to reclaim our economic independence in key areas. the select committee will expose the ccp's coordinated whole-of-society strategy to undermine american leadership and american sovereignty while working on a bipartisan basis

and with the committees of jurisdiction to identify long overdue, common sense approaches to counter ccp aggression. >> host: the urgency of the threat, he talks about there. how urgent, do you think, is economic and the technical threat from the chinese communist party right now? >> guest: i think representative pointed out and said a very valid concerns coming from china because of how china turn out to be, what china turn out to be after 0 years in world trade the organization that policymakers in washington and allied democracies had hoped china would become a more open society by joining the wto, but it didn't turn out that way. in fact, it turned out to be moreor authoritarian over time, particularly under president xi jinping's administration in the last ten years. i think he pointed out a lot of valid concerns. many terms of how urgent, it has been for many years, i think. so it's a welcome move, i think, to see congress putting together

something specifically for china and tackling the challenges. >> host: and framing it as a select committee that will focus on threats from the chinese communist party, not china writ large, why that framing for this new committee? >> guest: i think it's important. a lot of threats are concerning chinese behavior because of what the communist party in china was driving it. youu look at -- behavior, for example, it doesn't really matter whether a company is owned by the state, but when it comes to an influence overseas, even privately owned companies have to sometimes follow what theti communist party wants. so i think it's hitting the right target in terms of china's behavior. it's not because of the odder their chinese people. -- ordinary. >> host: when it comes to the economic threats and the technological threats, what has been their biggest victories against the united states, if you could call them that? what has been the biggest cost to the united states on that front from some of these efforts by the chinese communist party?

>> so the economic engagement between the united states and china have increased by a lot since, say, 20 the years ago. and i think -- 20 years ago. and i think some of them have been taken by beijing for leverage are. so having deals with the chinese economy, if you want to keep those deals, you want to be nicer to the chinese government. so i think that's what's not being calculated in the west. so so we did not anticipate that beijing was going to behave that way, but how do we tackle that a withoute hurting ourselves too much. that's the biggest challenge, i think -- >> host: what is the tradege balance right now between the united states and china? >> guest: well, the united states has been having a huge amount of trade deficit against china, and that, i have to say, did not change even during the trump administration. when -- even if the united states imposed tariffs on

chinese goods, it did not really deter that trade deficit that much. andt that speaks to the pact tt a we are -- the fact that we are already engaging with the chinese economy. we are buying a lot of cheap goods, c and that's not going to change even though on the margin we did impose some tariffs on them. >> host: so if tariffs didn't work, what would work? is the idea here a pullback, a larger pullback from that economic engagement? >> guest: the -- about the tariffs that we would be able to force china to abandon their unfair trade practices. already a lot of them including state subsidies on domestic firms in china where it comes to the competition -- [inaudible] for example. so beijing did not change kind of behaviorn even with the tariffs, which means that influencing foreign corporations is more valuable than just paying for the tariffs

themselves. so the trade war did not work, each though we wanted it to work on china. but i think now it's time to turn our attention to technologieste and other chinese types of behaviors, other chinese influence. china has been trying to influence the media space in the united states and higher education system as well. and as the representative rightly pointed out, those areas, i think, it's also hard because we want to say, we want to become tough on china to defend our freedom, but we don't want to do it while compromising our own freedom at home. so if you look at academics changes, for example, that's the freedom the u.s. universities have enjoyed over the years. so when we want to account for chinese influence, you don't want to compromise the academic freedom institutions have been having domestically. that's the hard tradeoff to strike. >> host: if you want to talk about this new selection committee on china, george mason

university's mercatus center, a senior fellowth there, democrat, 02-748-8000. republicans, 202 the-748-8001. independents, 202-748-8002. you talked a second ago about china wanting to influence the media space.en are you talking about specifically the concern over tiktok or that and other issues? >> guest: that included. but i think the most common behavior before, until recent years, was that china the would buy up advertisement on major newspapers, and hay just -- and they just dump the entire page of chinese newspapers on the pages as if they were news reporting. held purchase entire pages. and so that's what was common in the united states. but in other countries including u.s. allies, what we have seen is that china will provide the news agency to overseas media

outlets toed say that you run it int. your own newspaper. and some foreign news outlets ran it while acknowledging that this is from beijing. some did not even do that. so there's a lack of transparency even though i think it might be their freedom on the part of foreign news outlets to have these kind of economic deals with china. but evende if they have freedom, sometimes they were not being transparent about their conduct. and i think the second part, the lack of transparency, was what was concerning. >> host: and just staying on tiktok for a second, what is the concern over tiktoksome. >> guest: as in many other technology companies in china, tech companies in china, they own a lot of data of american users and overseas users, and sometimes that information became part of how they produce intelligence on foreign countries. and so what we have seen data links, for example, in the system where china was able to use information to back out who

works for federal agencies as contractors, you know, who are important people tos, target. and i think that's the hinge we are seeing with wechat which is the chinese version of another messaging app, and tiktok is known for having data privacy issues because beijing apparently could access the information whenever it wants. and that's very different from my other ec platforms we use like -- tech the platforms we use like twitter or facebook. >> host: and you look to the work of this victim committee, what will make it successful, in your mind? >> guest: i would come back to this major trade-off. it's easy to t be very trough on china. i think we want to be mindful that a c u.s./china relations ae very different than that with the u.s. and the soviet union where the trade-off is easy. not much was as stake economically speaking. it's easy to say let's go as tough as we can with the usssr, and that was the right strategy

under president -- but now we don't go that far because the american consumer is at stake as well. so we want to be careful that when we go tough on china, we don't hurt ourself that much. so where when we have a trade war on china, we will hurt american consumers and businesses but not achieve goal of changing chinese behavior. that is ar. lesson, i think, western learn very carefully. >> host: are we still in the trade the war with china? >> guest: we are. all the tariffs are still in place under president biden. they are hurting american businesses and consumers every single day. and we have seen no change from beijing whatsoever. >> host: a few callers. chance up first out of massachusetts, independent. chance, you're on. >> caller: hi, good morning. this is -- thanks for c-span and thanks for mr. z health care ong for speaking to us. i wanted to ask him about, you know, what i was reading many a

book by peter -- titled, "the end of the world is just the beginning." peter zeihan. he basically talks about how president xi is so powerful now that most of the people around him just agree to whatever he says. there is no counterpoint to him, hay just -- in fact, he doesn't even read any reports about what's happening in the country. he's just so disconnected from what's happening and how that's going to destroy china within the next ten years, because of his basically setting up a system where he has flunk keys agreeing to everything he says and how it's going to, is this going to really happen? what's happening? >> host: on president xi. >> guest: very very interesting question. i think many people held same

observation about him, that a he was being all-powerful. but i think the recent protests against covid lockdowns in china kind of changed that by a lot. it wasn'tec obvious to many observers w that beijing would abandon the zero covid lockdown policy basically overnight if after we had seen protests in special major cities in china. and i think now the chinese authorities are in a tough position, because if you look at what the chinese media are saying to the people, it's kind of hilarious because now they're saying that, you know, the lockdown was correct, but we kind of lifted it overnight, that was correct too. communist party's always correct. but it's not really defending the authority or legitimacy of xi jinping domestically, because people havein seen the protests where they chanted down with xi jinping, yelling that actually the worked. [laughter] at least giving them what they

wanted, which is a lifting of lockdown. so i think the fact that the people across the country have seen that is a compromising factor on xi jinping's rule in china. and i think we have to wait, only time will tell how much damage that was really inflect -- inflicted on him and how next ten years will pass of his rule. >> host: what was it about these protests that were, that made a difference compared to other protests in the past? >> guest: protests since tiananmen square and after tiananmen square, they were mostly onionst political issues like pollution. not in my backyard. there was a polluting factually near my home, i would go small scale protest with my neighbors, and that often times worked too because when you get enough people, the city government would say, well, let's move the factory somewhere else.

but they were never really about political issues until this time.is this time when people came up, he were not chanting only to lift the lockdown policy, but also just get rid of these communist officials because they just didn't like them. that was the first time, i think, since 1989. >> host: myrtle beach, south carolina. this is tim, independ. good morning. >> caller: good morning. how are you? >> host: doing well. go ahead, what's your question or comment? >> guest: yeah, i'd like to know. does mr. wong mow how much financial influence the chinese have in south america? because i watched a program about how they went in there, and they dumped billions and billions of dollars into a lot of different parts of south america. and when they did, they got the contract to build a lot of stuff down there. and, i mean, it was a massive amount of money. but i'm just trying to find out how much investments do they actually have in south america, and what do they own there?

>> guest: that's, i think the question is pointing toward the major foreign policy initiative called the belting and road initiative, and that was started by president xi jinping himself when he came into power in 2013. and the exact dollar amount, i i think, depends on country to country dependingng on which country in south america you're looking at. and also the difference in form of interest. so sometimes they come in loans, so a construction project, infrastructure project, they typically take theey form of chinese loans to these countries to be whatever they want it. and then sometimes that became a problem because they couldn't repay, and that has to do with economic conditions locally. but sometimes, there are other forms of influence when china would provide funds to media companies in those countries as in the selling content with reference obey ginning provided content to those media outlets in -- if you run this, you get someme payment.

and that would be not a loan. and so it differs from loans and purposes and a which region we're looking at. but overall, that kind of -- all these kind of influences have been rising in the last 20 the years, and that's precisely because china was trying to use the international institution they're part of, including the u.n., to leverage so they would get better votes on issues when it comes to the united nations. and in general, have an influence on these developing countries, it's a good target for beijing. >> host: why is it called the belt anded road initiativesome. >> guest: it has to do with the his or call legacy china used to engage some countries in the past along what they calleded a road toward central asia. and then xi jinping came up with this new term on the ocean which was basically let them into southeast asia by sea route. and it's the creation -- so one

it's the called belt and the other would have to be the call road. [laughter] but i think the, i've heard this phrase that the chinese influence, that really sums up the chinese influence. for a lot of these countries, if you don't take the road, you have to take the belt. and that's why it comes to why economic engagement sometimes is concerning. and that's a lot of the same problem as what we are seeing manym washington. >> host: gemma wants to know, why is china sill allowed to trade on the open market given the documentation of human rightsts violations in the country? >> guest: that's a valid concern. there are ava lot of -- about, r example, how many people were actually many portioned labor camps. the estimates varian varian -- vary to multiple million of uighurs, minors in china. but when it comes to trade in goods,ra when you import somethg

from china, anything you can see, for example, honestly in walmart or anything you see on amazon web site, some of them could beld made with forced lab. but it's very hard to figure out which part are made with forced labor. so when you try to ban goods from china, now you're in exactly the same trade-off i spoke about because sometimes youbo could target goods that ae innocent. simes you are missing goods that are truly made with forced labor. soso when you impose policies le this, it's easy to miss, it's easy to also -- the banned goods that are legitimate in terms of whether they are able to come into the united states. that's -- we can't just say, because not everything's made with forced labor in china. if that was the case, it would be an easy raidoff, back to the soviet -- trade-off, back to the soviet union, but we are not

there. >> host: you're on. >> caller: okay, thank you. i'm not going to talk about exactly what he's talking about, but there's a lot of talk about trade. the if you look back at bill clinton's administration and nafta, that's when most of this crap started. now, everybody says that the republicans passed that. that is not true. if you do the numbers, there is no way in hell the republicans could have passed this that. they didn't haveth the numbers o do it. the democrats had to help them. thank you. >> host: talking about nafta there, but the president meeting in this week with the president of mexico and prime minister of canada. how much influence does china have on our neighbors to the north and south? >> guest: china's influence on canada is similar in terms of scale with the united states. some might it's a little easier because of the fact that there are more chinese immigrants into

canada than already in the united states, proportionally speaking, proportionate to population. and, hence, it's always easier to influence chinese population overseas. the influence of foreign newspapers in chinese language, for example, and that's what makes canada a little bit easier target than the united states. but when it comes to, for example, mexico, i think the scale of influence is similar to other south american countries that we spoke about. they're on the rise. they're not the really in a dominating sense just yet, but we have to watch how that development goes. >> host: democrats, 202-748-8000, republicans, 8001, independents, 8002. talking about that new select committee, it was one of two created yesterday by the new house republican majority. one focused on threats from the chinese communist party, economic, technological threats. some democrats taking to the

house floor to oppose this committee, among them hank johnson, the democrat of georgia. here's a little bit of what he had to say yesterday. >> we watched china rise, we know their activities, we know what kind of competition they pose us economically, national security, intellectual property, human rights, all of these issues. we mow where we stand with china, and each of those issues are covered by jurisdiction -- by committees of jurisdiction that exist right now. and any investigation that is done can be done through the economisting -- existing committees. so why are we creating this committee? i fear that that it is to create a platform to unleash anti-asian hate a and division. >> host: hank johnson, one of 65 members of congress who voted against this committee creation yesterday, about 365 members voting for this committee.

his two with concerns there, i wonder your thoughts on it. >> guest: i think it's natural to see that some lawmakers are opposed to it. and i think it's a good reminder that as we try to sort of stand up against china, as they say, or be tough on china's influence, we should not overdo it in the sense that we turn it into a sentiment against chinese imp grants in general. and that's why i think targeting the chinese communist party is correct move, because it's not about the chinese people. there are a lot of chinese immigrants in the united states. they're integrated into the system, they love the freedom they have here. and the same is true for a lot of people living in china too. a lot of people who came out to protest, hay don't like living in the regime that they are living now, and that's why they were -- [background sounds] pleasure pleasure --