Hearings to examine combatting the People's Republic of China's behavior in the Indo-Pacific.
East Asian and Pacific Affairs
2025-10-07
Source: Congress.gov
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Foreign Relations Subcommittee on East Asia and the Pacific will come to order. Before we begin I want to go over a few ground rules. There will be zero tolerance for protests or any efforts to communicate with the witnesses or anybody up here on the dais. If you so choose to disrupt this hearing you will be arrested immediately and banned from this committee for one year. We invite the public to attend but we also have important business to attend to. With that said, we welcome everyone here today and thank our witnesses for agreeing to testify. We will begin with an opening statement from Senator Coons and then myself, and then we will hear from our witnesses. Following the testimonies, we will move to five minute round of questions. I would like to start by recognizing the ranking member for his comments.
Thank you so much, Senator Ricketts. I'm grateful for the chance to serve with you on the subcommittee and to partner on this hearing. And thanks to our three talented witnesses for being here to share your expertise. The most significant area of enduring bipartisan consensus in U.S. foreign policy is the growing threat that the PRC poses to American security and our economy. That's why Senator Ricketts and I came together to lead this subcommittee as chair and ranking, and one of the very first bipartisan codals of this Congress, led by Senator Ricketts, was our trip to Taiwan and the Philippines. For years, the national security establishment has correctly identified China as our central national security challenge. Today's hearing will explore China's gray zone activities, which are increasingly offering Beijing an asymmetric advantage, and that several administrations have struggled to respond to since they fall below the threshold of armed conflict. Our witnesses will spell out this wide range of activities used to coerce and bully and assert control over the Pacific. Let me give you just a few striking examples from this year of Beijing's brazen activities. In Australia, a US treaty ally for the first time We saw a large Chinese naval task group conduct a full circumnavigation of the continent and live-fire exercises with no warning, an enormous show of force intended to intimidate Australia and send a signal to other regional states. Against Taiwan, record levels of incursion by the PLA into Taiwanese airspace and its economic zones, brazen election interference, cutting undersea cables, and much more. This spring, China conducted its largest-ever military exercise around Taiwan, including simulated blockades and participation from the Chinese Navy and Coast Guard. In 2023, the PLA conducted more than 1,700 sorties into Taiwan's airspace. That number jumped 80 percent in 2024 to more than 3,000, and this year it's already surpassed that number with three months left in the year.
In the Philippines, we saw firsthand how the PRC claims islands, reefs, and other features despite international legal rulings against it and harasses Filipino vessels as a result. And the PLA is actively harassing our own pilots and vessels operating lawfully in international waters and airspace. What does this all mean and why does it matter? China is trying to change the facts on the ground in the Indo-Pacific, just as Putin did with Crimea in 2014. They're hoping they can salami slice their way into asserting control of the region and forcing the United States out. Perhaps most ominously, they're intending to create so much noise in the area with their steadily increasing operational tempo, creating a new normal, that we won't be able to tell the difference between an invasion and an actual, between an exercise and an actual invasion of Taiwan. As Indo-PACOM Commander Admiral Poparo has said, China's military exercises are no longer drills, they are rehearsals. The United States is an Indo-Pacific power and we cannot and should not back down. But how do we tackle this challenge? That we'll hear from our witnesses, and Chairman Ricketts and I will discuss with you today. The good news is our allies are stepping up in ways we haven't seen before. They are clear-eyed about the threat and determined to serve on the front lines of defense. They are spending significantly more on defense and security and providing troops, training, access, and material critical as we shore up deterrence. The bad news? As China has ramped up, the Trump administration has also taken steps that erode key sources of our strength. The Trump administration has been willing to do several things with regards to Taiwan that I view as strengthening – excuse me – weakening our partnership, withholding pre-scheduled weapons sales and deliveries, canceling high-level defense dialogues, and denying the president of Taiwan transit through the United States. The administration has defunded Radio Free Asia, Voice of America, dismantled the Global Engagement Center, which risk leaving PRC disinformation unresponded to and uncontested.
The administration has slapped our regional partners with significant tariffs, from 10 to 50 percent, making them prioritize economic interests over contributions to their defense and our security partnerships. They've also withheld critical foreign assistance. One project, for example, was building a communications infrastructure in Asia that is secure and that China doesn't own. The administration has now embarked on a dangerous campaign of taking strikes against vessels in international waters off Venezuela, striking with impunity and creating a dubious legal precedent that I view as risking our own sailors in the Indo-Pacific as they do freedom of navigation operations. If we don't change course,
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