WASHINGTON — Members of a bipartisan House committee examining economic competition between the U.S. and China said Tuesday that Congress must legislate barriers for American investment in Chinese corporations, including artificial intelligence.
“It’s as much as Congress to make sure American money is not financing the CCP’s top tech ambitions, including AI, quantum computing, and semiconductors, but in addition biotechnologies, directed energy, hypersonics, advanced manufacturing, space technologies … anything related to the PRC’s military-industrial complex,” said Rep. Mike Gallagher, chairman of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party.
Gallagher, R-Wisc., said through the hearing that American corporations continuing to speculate in blacklisted Chinese firms are helping to fund the Chinese government’s push to invade Taiwan.
Government worker pension funds are also at play. Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, D-In poor health., rating member of the committee, cited a May Newsweek report stating that at the very least 115 mutual funds offered under the federal government’s Thrift Savings Plan contain a number of of 30 sanctioned or watch-listed Chinese corporations that threaten national security.
“By investing in these corporations we risk supporting the CCP’s military aggression and their human rights abuses,” Krishnamoorthi said.
“If the Chinese Communist Party moves on Taiwan, it might result in a catastrophic war, a world depression and tens of 1000’s of lives being lost on all sides,” Krishnamoorthi told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Tuesday. “That is something we’ve to stop.”
But Gallagher said that Wall Street firms haven’t seriously considered the threats posed by the People’s Republic of China, including risks to the U.S. economy, if the PRC prepares to invade its neighbor.
“What’s Wall Street doing to protect against that consequence?” Gallagher said on the hearing Tuesday. “Are banks and asset managers moving to guard American investors? Or are they simply betting on one other bailout?”
A minimum of one Wall Street firm, JPMorgan Chase, is worried about strained relations with China, in response to CEO Jamie Dimon.
“I do not expect a war in Taiwan, but this may go south,” Dimon said Monday at a financial conference in Latest York. Prospects for JPMorgan operations in China are looking less optimistic amid uncertainties in IPO and merger markets, he added.
