WASHINGTON—A newly formed committee is sounding the alarm about the dangers posed by a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) that is waging unrestricted warfare against the United States, and the group is urging President Donald Trump to go further in opposing the CCP.

In its fourth public event since it was founded in late March, the Committee on the Present Danger: China gathered politicians and experts on Capitol Hill on May 2 to discuss topics such as fifth-generation (5G) communications technology, intellectual property (IP) theft, the nature of the Chinese regime, and U.S. financial support for it.

5G

Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.) said that in an age of the “internet of things,” everything is connected to something, and that something is connected to a network. That is why the United States can’t afford to lose the race for 5G, the coming generation of internet technology. If that network is controlled by the CCP’s version of 5G, all the data in it will be compromised.

Perry used the battle of Gettysburg as an example of how important information is. In what is often described as the turning point in the U.S. Civil War, the Confederate commander, Robert E. Lee, had faulty information about the number and disposition of the Union forces, leading to his defeat.

“If the Chinese control that kind of information,” Perry said, “the battle is already over, unfortunately. … We have become completely reliant upon their technology, because of the cost, because of how pervasive it is, and because it’s just been easy.”

“We will have to recognize that this [technology] is essentially controlling the speech we have among one another, because we speak through one of the devices,” Perry said. “Every single bit of our communications will either be controlled by the United States of America, in our benevolence and our wish to be free and preserve privacy, and ensure the integrity of our intelligence, or information will be controlled by someone else.”

“And they might have the goodwill to do this for us, but they might not. And if they are strategic adversaries that have an interest in overtaking us which, by the way, they do in this case, I suspect they might not be as benevolent.”

Perry said the Chinese are very focused about developing 5G, while, in the United States, we are fighting over a letter that Attorney General William Barr wrote. America needs to develop a coherent strategy for developing 5G, he said.

In response to an audience question regarding whether Trump should use economic warfare as a means to defeat the CCP—as President Ronald Reagan had done to the Soviet Union—Perry said yes, he believes that Trump should go beyond trade itself.

Perry applauded Trump for doing more than any other president regarding China, but warned that Americans have very short attention spans.

In contrast, the CCP has the attitude of “you might have the watch, but we’ve got the time.” The United States must stick with its initiatives against the CCP and adopt very robust and more significant actions to force China into good behavior, Perry said.

IP Theft

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) said that in order to have access to the market of 1.4 billion people in China, some U.S. companies made a decision to give up their intellectual property. He indicated that he has less sympathy toward those companies in terms of IP theft.

However, outright theft by the CCP can’t be tolerated, and this is very hard to deal with through trade deals, Johnson said.

“The cyber theft [and] the industrial espionage of our industrial and military secrets [are] completely intolerable. Now, it’s pretty hard to govern that, or control that through trade agreements. They don’t even admit to it.”

Johnson said the Chinese regime has been deploying Sun Tzu’s “Art of War” against the West for millennia, and the United States needs to wake up to that.

The best defense for the United States, Johnson said, is to have a strong economy and rebuild the military.

“I support President Trump’s strong desire to get China to adhere to world norms, trading norms, to try and get them to stop stealing our stuff, to at least acknowledge it, and to open up their markets, as open as ours are, to their products.”

‘Utterly Ruthless’

Brian Kennedy, chairman of the Committee on the Present Danger: China (CPDC) reminisced about attending a meeting 28 years ago of the original Committee on the Present Danger, which was devoted to countering the threat from the Soviet Union. Since then, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has become a formidable power, and should be taken seriously, he said.

“Even though the title is ‘The Committee on the Present Danger,’ and it makes us sound somewhat pessimistic, I’m optimistic that if the American people knew all the facts that we’ve been laying out, and are going to lay out for you both today and in the future, we can turn around the danger posed by the PRC, however dangerous they are,” Kennedy said.

While the CCP is “extremely dangerous,” Kennedy said it’s important to distinguish the Chinese people from the Chinese Communist Party.

“The people seem a lot like us: hard-working, decent, and willing to make sacrifices. But they’re governed by the Chinese Communist Party. And [the CCP is] utterly ruthless. Their ability to do things is unsurpassed, because they’re willing to kill, and they’re willing to intimidate. We Americans, when we see China today, we don’t understand that.”

Kennedy said that he thinks the president understands that, and that’s why he is taking a very tough stance on trade, and on rebuilding the U.S. military.

Enabling the CCP

Frank Gaffney, vice chairman of CPDC, said a trade agreement with China is unlikely to be fulfilled in its own terms, and will bring very dire repercussions if not done in the context of the myriad dangers that China represents.

Gaffney said through the financial sector and some business leaders, U.S. funds have been used to support the CCP.

“We are enabling, through our underwriting, through our technology transfers—voluntary and involuntary—and through our other forms of support, the Chinese Communist Party and the regime to misrule China, out of our own pockets. And this is, of course, adding very considerable insult to the injury.”

While the CCP is enslaving its own people and plans to expand that to “many others,” “we are doing the enabling of the enslaving,” Gaffney said.