Top U.S. House conservatives have introduced a legislative proposal to formally sanction thousands of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials, including Chinese dictator Xi Jinping and his entire family, Breitbart News has learned exclusively.
The proposal, from Rep. Lisa McClain (R-MI), has the backing of Republican Study Committee (RSC) chairman Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN) and of House Armed Services Committee ranking member Rep. Mike Rogers (R-AL). The measure represents the strongest sanctions effort against the CCP and Xi himself that Congress has yet considered, and is a serious escalation that comes on the heels of the publication of Red-Handed, a book from Breitbart News contributor and Government Accountability Institute (GAI) president Peter Schweizer that exposes senior CCP intelligence ties to and financial deals with family members of Democrat President Joe Biden and other senior congressional leaders like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), and more.
Titled the “Stop CCP Act,” McClain’s bill would level debilitating sanctions on CCP officials, including blocking them from getting visas for U.S. travel and financial sanctions blocking them from using or accessing certain assets. It would sanction every member of the CCP’s “National Congress,” the CCP’s highest governmental body. The National Congress of the CCP holds sessions every five years with the most senior members of the CCP, and its next meeting is scheduled to be toward the end of this year.
In addition to Xi Jinping himself being sanctioned under this proposal, his immediate family members—such as his daughter, who went to Harvard earlier in life—would also be sanctioned. If this bill had been law at that time, Xi’s daughter would not have been allowed to attend Harvard.
The bill would also ban those more than 2,000 CCP members from entering the United States—and block their families from coming in as well. They would also all—the CCP officials and their family members—be formally blocked from accessing America’s financial systems, so they could not use their family members to sneak around sanctions.
This bill would also prohibit American companies operating in China from conducting any transactions or operations with any of the sanctioned individuals—both the CCP officials and their family members.
The bill also provides an off-ramp for China from these crippling sanctions: If the CCP truly stops its human rights abuses with Uyghurs and in Hong Kong, theft of American intellectual property, and incursions into Taiwan, the legislation provides a waiver that the President of the United States can use to certify lifting the sanctions for two years providing the conditions are met. That waiver would sunset statutorily every two years, however, and need to be renewed by Congress to ensure that a president too tied up with China financially—like Biden—could not abuse the waiver.
“China is one of the biggest threats to the safety and security of the United States and the world,” McClain said in a statement provided exclusively to Breitbart News. “Sanctioning leaders of the CCP is a commonsense way to show China and the world that we are sick and tired of their aggressive, bully-like tactics.”
RSC chairman Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN) added that the CCP officials being sanctioned in this proposal are particularly brutal abusers of human rights. With 159 members across the House GOP conference, the conservative RSC that Banks oversees is the largest group of House Republicans—actually the largest caucus of members of either or both parties—in Congress.
“This collection of individuals are some of the world’s worst human rights offenders and leaders in an authoritarian, evil regime,” Banks said. “We not only have a national security obligation, but a moral obligation, to block them from carrying out their corrupt agenda here on our shores. The Republican Study Committee is proud to lead the way in standing up to the Chinese Communist Party.”
Rogers, the ranking member of Armed Services who would presumably become the chairman of that very powerful committee, which considers annually must-pass legislation like the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), said this is a measure aimed at holding the CCP accountable.
“The Chinese Communist Party must be held accountable for their egregious and disturbing human rights abuses,” Rogers said. “Every day that Joe Biden hesitates in holding the CCP accountable for genocide and slave labor the CCP only grows more emboldened in their campaign of evil.”
Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC), the RSC’s National Security and Foreign Affairs chairman, is also backing the bill. “I am grateful to join this effort to require sanctions on senior CCP members for their malign behavior and human rights abuses,” Wilson said. “We must be bold if we are going to push back against decades of the CCP taking advantage of us and oppressing the extraordinary people of China.”
In addition to Banks, Rogers, and Wilson, original cosponsors of McClain’s bill include Reps. Brian Babin (R-TX), Vern Buchanan (R-FL), Andrew Clyde (R-GA), Rodney Davis (R-IL), Carlos Gimenez (R-FL), Yvette Herrell (R-NM), Clay Higgins (R-LA), Bill Johnson (R-OH), Doug Lamborn (R-CO), David McKinley (R-WV), Mary Miller (R-IL), Marianette Miller-Meeks (R-IA), Steven Palazzo (R-MS), Tracey Mann (R-KS), and Greg Steube (R-FL).
With such broad support from across powerful GOP leaders, while Democrats are unlikely to openly consider the proposal this Congress, if Republicans take the majority back in the House as expected in the upcoming midterm elections, it is very likely to pass the chamber next year in a GOP-controlled House.
“Xi Jinping is going to hate this legislation,” a senior GOP aide from an office supporting it told Breitbart News. “This would take Xi’s paw out of our honey pot.”
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