A bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers is traveling to California this week to meet with top technology and entertainment executives, as well as Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen. Led by US Representative Mike Gallagher, a Wisconsin Republican who chairs the US House Select Committee on China, the group seeks to gain a better understanding of how the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) influences different aspects of American society. The lawmakers plan to inquire about China's content censorship and how it prevents the US from exporting its culture, particularly in the entertainment and technology industries.
The group will meet with Walt Disney Co. CEO Bob Iger and other producers and screenwriters in Los Angeles to talk about how Beijing's demands affect US films in exchange for access to the Chinese market. They are particularly concerned with the CCP's ability to insert its narrative into global productions, which undermines the soft power of exporting US culture.
In addition to meeting with industry executives, the group plans to have lunch in the San Francisco Bay Area with executives from Alphabet Inc's Google, Microsoft Corp, Palantir Technologies Inc, and Apple Inc CEO Tim Cook. They are also planning to have dinner that night with several prominent venture capitalists, including Marc Andreessen and Vinod Khosla.
The lawmakers' conversations with private-sector leaders come as US companies across the economy are reassessing their exposure to China and reliance on its consumers and supply chains. Some industries of particular concern to the group include pharmaceuticals, rare earth minerals, artificial intelligence, and quantum computing.
The group is also scheduled to meet with US House of Representatives Speaker Kevin McCarthy, a California Republican, during Tsai's stopover as she returns from an official visit to Guatemala and Belize. The group is part of Gallagher's new House panel focused on China, which seeks to understand all aspects of the "strategic competition" between the US and China.
The Taiwan President's office has declined to confirm Tsai's planned meetings in advance. However, the group has already met with US House of Representatives Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, the top House Democrat, in his home state of New York. Legislators Gallagher and US Representative Raja Krishnamoorthi, the top Democrat on the China Committee, are co-sponsors of several bills that seek to ban the popular video-sharing app TikTok from operating in the US.
In conclusion, this bipartisan US delegation aims to learn more about China's influence on various aspects of America and how to confront the threat posed by the CCP. Through discussions with industry executives and political leaders, they hope to gain valuable insights into the challenges facing the US in its "strategic competition" with China.
