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The US should boost efforts to tackle security-related economic threats from China by creating one government body designed to cut bureaucratic infighting, according to an influential congressional commission.
The US-China Economic and Security Review Commission on Tuesday said the US government had to halt internecine fights to help improve its ability to implement and monitor export controls and improve sanctions policy.
In one of 28 recommendations on issues from biotechnology supply chains to Taiwan, the commission said the new entity should take in parts of the government such as the commerce department’s bureau of industry and security [BIS], the Treasury department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, and the state department’s office of export control co-operation.
“You essentially have feudal states that are arguing about various elements that they control in this ecosystem,” said Michael Kuiken, a commissioner on the congressionally mandated commission at a briefing. “We know there’s going to be an enduring conflict with China, and we need to reorganise to think about this in a thoughtful way.”
In its annual report on US-China relations to Congress, the commission said the US needed to make the change “to counter China’s systematic and persistent circumvention tactics”. It added the “current fragmented approach across multiple agencies dilutes accountability and prioritisation”.
The report comes as Washington and Beijing increasingly engage in strategic competition in areas from economics to security. It was released just weeks after Presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping reached a deal in South Korea on ratcheting down trade tensions. But US lawmakers remain very concerned about a range of threats from China.
The commission also asked Congress to boost BIS’s ability to manage competition with China in fast-moving technologies such as artificial intelligence chips. BIS should force companies to use tracking technologies for advanced chips for export, it said. It also recommended BIS require companies exporting chips above a certain threshold to use a “rent model” providing customers with access solely via the cloud.
The commission also urged legislators to require Indo-Pacific Command, which oversees US forces in the Pacific, to prove its compliance with the Taiwan Relations Act. The act demands the military maintain the capacity to resist any use of force against Taiwan.
“We refer to it as the show your homework recommendation part of the Taiwan Relations Act,” said Randy Schriver, the commission’s vice-chair. “To my knowledge, Indo-Pacom has never been asked to prove that.”
The commission also recommended Congress increase funding for US Space Force to counter China’s rapid acceleration in space. The Pentagon also needed to enhance the ability of the force “to conduct space war gaming and develop realistic modelling and simulation of potential threats from China”, the report said.
