Congress takes up a series of bills targeting China, from drones to drugs

WASHINGTON — How to Curb and Counter China’s Influence and Power — through its biotech companies, drones and electric vehicles — the first week after the summer break in the US House of Representatives will be dominated by a series of measures aimed at Beijing.

Washington sees Beijing as its biggest geopolitical rival, and the legislation is being touted as a guarantee that the US will gain the upper hand in the competitionMany of the bills coming to a vote this week appear to have both Republican and Democratic support, reflecting a strong consensus that congressional action is needed to counter China.

The legislation “will take meaningful steps to counter the military, economic and ideological threat posed by the Chinese Communist Party,” said Rep. John Moolenaar, chairman of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party and a Republican from Michigan. “There is a bipartisan goal to win this competition.”

Advocacy groups are concerned about the impact and warn against rhetoric that could hurt Asian Americans and create “an atmosphere of guilt by association or fuel division,” said Christine Chen, executive director of Asian & Voice of American Pacific Islanders.

The Chinese embassy in Washington called the legislation “new McCarthyism” that is heightening tensions in an election year. If passed, the bills “will seriously interfere with China-US relations and mutually beneficial cooperation, and will inevitably damage the interests, image and credibility of the US itself,” spokesman Liu Pengyu said in a statement.

The bills include efforts to reduce U.S. dependence on Chinese biotech companies, ban Chinese electric vehicles and drones, limit the purchase of agricultural land by Chinese nationals, tighten export controls and revive a program to crack down on spying on U.S. intellectual property.

If approved, the measures would still need to be approved by the Senate. Here’s a look at the key legislation:

A bill aims to ban a group of five people biotechnology prevent companies with Chinese ties from working with people who receive federal funds.

These companies include those that help doctors detect genetic causes of cancer or those that do research and manufacturing for U.S. drugmakers, which is considered an important step in the development of new drugs.

US biotech companies say the bill will disrupt their work with Chinese contractors, leading to delays in clinical trials for new drugs and higher costs.

Supporters say the legislation is needed to protect U.S. health care data and reduce the country’s reliance on China for its medical supply chain.

“American patients cannot be in a position where we have to rely on China for genomic testing or basic medical supplies,” said Rep. Brad Wenstrup, an Ohio Republican who sponsored the bill. He called it “the first step” in protecting Americans’ genetic data.

BGI, one of the Chinese companies named in the bill, called it “a false flag targeting companies under the pretext of national security.” The company, which provides genetic sequencing for research purposes in the U.S., said it follows the law and does not have access to Americans’ personal data.

Another bill would drones made by Chinese company DJI, which dominates the global drone market, “poses an unacceptable risk to U.S. national security” and has removed its products from U.S. communications networks over data security concerns.

The bill would protect Americans’ data and critical infrastructure, said Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York, who introduced the bill. “Congress must use every tool at our disposal to stop China’s ‘monopolistic control of the drone market,'” she said.

DJI claims that users must “opt in” to share data such as flight logs, photos and videos with the company. If users don’t, the company has said it has no data to share with a government if forced to. It has also rejected accusations that it is a Chinese military company and has aided the persecution of members of ethnic Muslim minorities.

Adam Bry, co-founder and CEO of major US drone manufacturer Skydio, told a congressional committee in June about the loss of business to China, where “the Chinese government has attempted to control the drone industry, investing resources in national champions and targeting competitors in the US and the West, tilting the playing field in China’s favor.”

There will likely be objections to any attempt to revive a Trump-era program that would be a way to stop Chinese efforts to steal intellectual property and spy on industry and research.

The bill would direct the Justice Department to curb Beijing’s spying on U.S. intellectual property and academic institutions and to go after people who commit trade secret theft, hacking and economic espionage.

The Trump-era program, called the China Initiative, ended in 2022 after multiple failed prosecutions of researchers and concerns that it had led to racial and ethnic profiling. Critics also say it had chilled U.S.-China science and technology cooperation meant to serve the greater good.

“Our colleagues in the Republican Party wanted to reinstate this failed program because they wanted to appear to be solving problems, but in reality, they only stoked fear and hatred,” several Democratic lawmakers said in a statement in March, when they defeated another attempt to revive the program.

Another bill, which would protect U.S. farmland from foreign adversaries, has raised concerns about discrimination.

It would add the agriculture secretary to the U.S. Committee on Foreign Investment, which reviews the national security implications of foreign transactions. The bill also marks land sales involving citizens of China, North Korea, Russia and Iran as “reportable.”

“Food security is national security, and for too long the federal government has allowed the Chinese Communist Party to jeopardize our security by turning a blind eye to their steadily increasing purchases of American farmland,” said Rep. Dan Newhouse, a Republican from Washington state, who introduced the bill.

The National Agricultural Law Center estimates that 24 states prohibit or restrict undocumented foreigners and foreign companies or governments from owning private farmland. The interest was sparked after a Chinese billionaire bought more than 130,000 acres near a US air base in Texas and another Chinese company tried build a corn plant near an air force base in North Dakota.