McCarthyism revives in a new disguise: China Daily editorial

In the speech he delivered on winning the House Speaker election, US Congress majority leader Kevin McCarthy promised to establish a select committee to tackle the alleged "multifaceted threats" of China to the United States.

On Tuesday, the US House of Representatives voted 365 to 65 to establish the House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition between the US and the Chinese Communist Party. All the Republicans in the House and 146 Democrats supported the move, a rare meeting of minds, considering the deep split between the two parties that disagree with each other on almost everything else.

But it is symptomatic of the anti-China consensus that prevails in Washington. Among the anti-China chorus on Capitol Hill, the new House Speaker has been one of the most prominent voices. On Aug 3, one day after his predecessor in the role, Nancy Pelosi provocatively visited Taiwan, McCarthy said he "would have gone with her had she asked".

China-bashing politicians such as McCarthy are attempting to portray China as an enemy and have no qualms about reviving the ism of his namesake. Their anti-China rhetoric harkens back to the 1950s, when Senator Joseph McCarthy launched a witch hunt against anyone who could be accused of being a communist or communist sympathizer. Film stars, government staff members, politicians, even scientists such as Albert Einstein, came under scrutiny. Today, the same thing is being done to silence any voices with a more rational and objective view of China.

On Jan 16, 2022, New York-based media Daily Freeman published a letter to the editor that compared Kevin McCarthy to Joseph McCarthy. It said that the difference between the two is that "Senator Joseph McCarthy was stopped by some of his own party because they recognized his dangerous conduct".

Seven decades have passed and such dangerous conduct is not only being condoned but encouraged by both parties.

Of course, given the public humiliation he suffered in securing the role of speaker and the concessions he had to make to even harder-liners in his party, McCarthy had his own personal motivation for so quickly bringing the House together in its unwarranted animosity toward China. He needed to create the impression that he is not in the hole to the uber-conservative members of his own party who have effectively hijacked the interests of the US people with their unwillingness to compromise on any issue.

But with the country's many economic and social problems certain to continue to fester as a result of their intransigence, it can be expected that the noise about China will be amplified to create the illusion that something is being done. That in turn will likely pull US foreign policy by the nose along an ill-considered path.