IV 
116TH CONGRESS 
2D SESSION 
H. CON. RES. 121 
Recognizing the People’s Republic of China as the greatest foreign threat 
to United States peace, security, and stability. 
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 
OCTOBER 20, 2020 
Mr. BIGGS submitted the following concurrent resolution; which was referred 
to the Committee on Foreign Affairs 
CONCURRENT RESOLUTION 
Recognizing the People’s Republic of China as the greatest 
foreign threat to United States peace, security, and stability. 
Whereas the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has a popu-
lation of approximately 1,400,000,000, compared to the 
United States population of approximately 330,000,000; 
Whereas the PRC’s economy is the second largest in the 
world, as measured by gross domestic product (GDP), be-
hind only the United States; 
Whereas the PRC’s GDP will likely surpass United States 
GDP in the coming decades; 
Whereas the PRC has the largest active duty military in the 
world; 
Whereas the PRC has committed to aggressively modernizing 
its military capabilities in the coming decades; 
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Whereas the PRC possesses nuclear-capable intercontinental 
ballistic missiles; 
Whereas the PRC does not share the democratic or free mar-
ket values of the United States; 
Whereas Xi Jinping has been the de facto paramount leader 
of the PRC since November 2012, when he attained the 
positions of General Secretary of the Chinese Communist 
Party and Chairman of the Central Military Commission; 
Whereas Xi became the head of state of the PRC in March 
2013, with a title usually labeled ‘‘President’’ in Western 
sources; 
Whereas President Xi has decisively broken with the foreign 
policy restraint practiced by his immediate predecessors; 
Whereas President Xi declared in a 2018 speech before the 
National People’s Congress that the PRC ‘‘must ride on 
the mighty east wind of the new era, charge forward with 
a full tank and steadily steer the wheel with full power’’; 
Whereas the PRC has neoimperial ambitions to spread its 
power throughout the world; 
Whereas the PRC launched the Belt and Road Initiative 
(BRI) in 2013, to offer financing for transportation and 
energy infrastructure projects in dozens of countries; 
Whereas many of the BRI-participating countries are poor, 
unstable, or potentially vulnerable to debt dependence on 
Beijing; 
Whereas the United States has very sensitive strategic rela-
tionships with many BRI-participating countries, includ-
ing Afghanistan and Pakistan; 
Whereas the PRC has released few details about the BRI, de-
spite widespread calls from the United States, the Inter-
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national Monetary Fund, and other governments and 
multinational organizations for greater transparency; 
Whereas while the PRC has been opaque about the BRI, it 
has been very clear about its ambitions in the South 
China Sea in recent years; 
Whereas the PRC claims ‘‘indisputable sovereignty over the 
South China Sea islands and their adjacent waters’’; 
Whereas this assertion of sovereignty is not, in fact, ‘‘indis-
putable’’ to the other countries in the region; 
Whereas Taiwan, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei, Indonesia, and 
the Philippines, a United States treaty ally, all dispute 
the PRC’s expansive South China Sea claims; 
Whereas the PRC continues to construct militarized artificial 
islands in the South China Sea to bolster its position; 
Whereas trillions of dollars of ship-borne commerce pass 
through the South China Sea each year, including to 
United States markets; 
Whereas the PRC continues to aggressively claim sovereignty 
over Taiwan; 
Whereas, on September 30, 2020, the PRC’s Premier, Li 
Keqiang, proclaimed that ‘‘we will . . . resolutely oppose 
and curb any ‘Taiwan independence’ separatist behaviors 
and external interference, . . . and promote . . . the re-
unification of the motherland’’; 
Whereas Beijing’s claims of sovereignty over Taiwan are 
belied by the fact that the Taiwanese people have inde-
pendently governed their island for over 70 years; 
Whereas Taiwan is a vitally important friend and regional se-
curity partner of the United States; 
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Whereas the Taiwan-United States bond has been solidified 
by the Taiwan Relations Act, the Taiwan Travel Act, and 
the ‘‘Six Assurances’’ first promulgated by the Reagan 
administration in 1982; 
Whereas the PRC continues to curtail the rights of the resi-
dents of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region; 
Whereas, on June 30, 2020, the PRC’s National People’s 
Congress passed an expansive national security law to 
broadly criminalize democratic participation and protest 
in Hong Kong; 
Whereas this law and other efforts to curtail democratic par-
ticipation in Hong Kong violates the PRC’s commitments 
in 1984 and 1997 to the United Kingdom to respect 
Hong Kong’s long tradition of economic and democratic 
freedoms for 50 years, beginning on July 1, 1997; 
Whereas the Beijing government’s increasingly hostile actions 
threaten the 85,000 American residents and 1,300 
United States firms operating in Hong Kong; 
Whereas, in addition to the above and other geostrategic 
threats, the PRC wields enormous influence over the 
United States economy; 
Whereas the PRC holds over $1,000,000,000,000 in United 
States Treasury bonds, more than any other foreign na-
tion except Japan; 
Whereas in recent years the PRC has maintained a massive 
trade surplus over the United States, valued at 
$345,600,000,000 in 2019, by manipulating its currency 
and maintaining unreasonably high tariffs, among other 
tactics; 
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Whereas the PRC routinely pressures United States compa-
nies entering its market to cede their intellectual property 
and market licensing rights; 
Whereas the PRC frequently carries out cyberattacks on 
United States companies to steal trade secrets or other 
sensitive information it cannot obtain by other means; 
Whereas cyberattacks originating from the PRC target not 
only companies, but also United States Government and 
United States defense interests, academic institutions, 
nonprofit organizations, and average citizens; and 
Whereas it is likely that the PRC has access to the personal 
data of most citizens of the United States: Now, there-
fore, be it 
Resolved by the House of Representatives (the Senate 
concurring), That Congress— 
(1) recognizes that the People’s Republic of 
China (PRC) currently poses the greatest foreign 
threat to United States peace, security, and stability; 
(2) recognizes that the PRC, regardless of fu-
ture leadership, will likely continue to be a major 
rival of the United States in the coming decades, 
due to the enormous cumulative size and scale of its 
population, economy, and military capabilities; and 
(3) supports the Trump administration’s overall 
strategic approach to the PRC, grounded in prin-
cipled realism and firm-but-measured competitive 
engagement whenever United States national inter-
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ests are at stake, that has been outlined in sources 
including but not limited to— 
(A) the United States Strategic Approach 
to the People’s Republic of China (May 2020); 
(B) the National Defense Strategy of the 
United States of America (October 2018); 
(C) the National Cyber Strategy of the 
United States of America (September 2018); 
and 
(D) the National Security Strategy of the 
United States of America (December 2017). 
Æ 
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