A hearing about the Time to Choose Act, a bipartisan bill that would ban consultants and other service providers from working both with the U.S. government and Chinese-owned companies, Senate Homeland Security Committee ranking member Rand Paul, R-Ky., said he agreed with a witness who said it could create a slippery slope.
Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., introduced a bill this week that could lead to sanctions being imposed on Chinese entities and officials involved in producing precursor chemicals for fentanyl.
While Congress began a long recess this week without passing Venezuela legislation, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere said lawmakers might address the matter when they reconvene in mid-November.
More than 70 members of the House of Representative are asking the administration to ask the European Union to delay its deforestation reporting requirements, which they say would be impossible to meet for wood chips and fluff pulp, used in menstrual pads and diapers.
The House voted 243-174 late Sept. 25 to approve a bill that would impose property-blocking sanctions on Chinese Communist Party leaders for committing human rights abuses, harassing Taiwan or undermining Hong Kong's autonomy.
Both chambers of Congress on Sept. 25 approved extending until Dec. 20 the soon-to-expire Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act. The 2019 law requires the president to sanction Chinese and Hong Kong officials responsible for human rights violations in Hong Kong (see 2409230017). The extension is included in a short-term government funding measure, or continuing resolution, that the House and Senate passed and that President Joe Biden plans to sign into law.
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee postponed a Sept. 25 markup of a bill that would sanction Georgian officials for cracking down on civil society organizations and independent media outlets (see 2409230017). The committee didn't say why it delayed the meeting at which the markup and a host of other activities were to occur. It said a new meeting date is yet to be determined.
House Select Committee on China Chairman John Moolenaar, R-Mich., urged the Defense Department this week to add two leading Chinese display providers, BOE Technology Group and Tianma Microelectrics Co., to its Section 1260H list of Chinese military companies, citing their ties to the People’s Liberation Army.
The House Foreign Affairs Committee on Sept. 24 approved the Houthi Human Rights Accountability Act, which would authorize sanctions on the Yemen-based Houthis for human rights abuses (see 2409230017). The committee also approved the Strategic PRC Port Mapping Act, which would require the Defense and State departments to monitor China’s efforts to build or buy “strategic foreign ports.”
Congress should strengthen the “guardrails” around federally funded research collaboration between American universities and Chinese defense-linked universities to ensure China does not obtain technology to improve its military or commit human rights abuses, two House committees said in a new report this week.