Chris Smith: “I urge my colleagues to join me in supporting H.R. 8036, the Indo-Pacific Security Supplemental Appropriations Act, a…”

“I urge my colleagues to join me in supporting H.R. 8036, the Indo-Pacific Security Supplemental Appropriations Act, a bill whose passage is essential to our national security. By far and away, the greatest threat to world peace since the fall of the Soviet Union is a Communist China that seeks to displace the United States as global hegemon, while nursing historical grievances over past humiliations by nations of the West. The People's Republic of China is not simply a strategic rival of the United States, but a systemic one, which seeks to rewrite the entire rules-based international order and recreate it in its own image. To that end, it has targeted Taiwan, known formally as the Republic of China. The strategic importance of Taiwan in countering the Chinese Communist Party's hegemonistic ambitions cannot be overstated. It is the anchor of the first island chain, stretching from Japan to the Philippines, and it is a major economic and trade power in its own right. It dominates the semiconductor supply chain, integral to our economic and security well-being. But more than that, it is a beacon of hope for the Chinese people, a bastion of democracy and freedom and a rebuke to the narrative of Xi Jinping and the CCP that the Chinese tradition is inimical to democracy and human rights. Taiwan, like Israel, is an absolutely key strategic ally in a dangerous part of the world.…”