WASHINGTON — House Republicans and Democrats on China’s new select committee opened their first hearing Tuesday night, vowing to investigate the Chinese Communist Party’s many technological, economic and military threats.

The primetime hearing comes amid escalating tensions with Beijing. For days, the nation was captivated by a Chinese spy balloon that floated over Alaska and the contiguous United States before being shot down off the coast of North Carolina.

And this week, the Department of Energy concluded in a classified report shared with lawmakers that the Covid-19 pandemic «likely» spread through a laboratory leak in Wuhan, China. FBI Director Christopher Wray said much the same thing in a Fox News interview that aired moments before the hearing.

“We can call this a ‘strategic competition,’ but it’s not a polite tennis match,” China committee chairman Mike Gallagher, a Wisconsin Republican, said in opening remarks at Tuesday’s hearing. “This is an existential fight about what life will be like in the 21st century, and the most fundamental freedoms are at stake.”

Both the chair and the panel’s top Democrat, Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi of Illinois, made it clear that the committee is targeting the Chinese communist government, not the people of China who have fallen victim to the regime’s oppressive tactics.

“We must practice bipartisanship and avoid anti-Chinese or Asian stereotypes at all costs. We must recognize that the CCP wants us to be rebellious, partisan, and prejudiced. In fact, the CCP expects it,” Krishnamoorthi said.

“We don’t have any disputes with the Chinese people or people of Chinese origin,” he added later.

The high-profile hearing, held in the same cavernous room that housed the committee’s historic hearings on January 6, began with a video presentation detailing numerous human rights abuses committed by Chinese government officials, since the massacre of the Tiananmen Square in 1989 until the alleged rape and torture. of the Uyghurs.

Gallagher and Krishnamoorthi tried to set a bipartisan tone early on in the panel, inviting four witnesses who are respected on both sides of the aisle.

They included two Trump White House officials, former national security adviser HR McMaster and former deputy national security adviser Matthew Pottinger, who publicly criticized Donald Trump after the January 6 attack on Capitol Hill.

The panel also heard from Tong Yi, a Chinese human rights defender who served as an aide to one of China’s best-known political dissidents; and Scott Paul, president of the Alliance for American Manufacturing, who argued that «the economic policies of the Chinese Communist Party pose a clear and present danger to the American worker, the innovation base, and our national security.»

The hearing was briefly interrupted by a pair of Code Pink protesters, who were holding signs reading «China is not our enemy» and «Stop Asian Hate.» Wasting no time, Paul pointed out that those protesters who have an «unlimited amount of free speech» in the United States would not enjoy those freedoms in China.

With a topic as complicated as China, Tuesday night’s audience swung from topic to topic, from TikTok and Taiwanese independence to China’s artificial islands in the South China Sea.

Pottinger warned lawmakers that social media giant TikTok, owned by China-based ByteDance, had already admitted to monitoring American journalists to identify and retaliate against their sources. TikTok’s biggest threat, he said, is its ability to influence millions of Americans by controlling what they see on the video-based app.

“The biggest blow to the Chinese Communist Party, if TikTok is allowed to continue operating in the United States…is that it gives the Chinese Communist Party the ability to manipulate our social discourse, the news, censor and suppress or amplify what dozens of millions of Americans watch, read, experience and listen through their social media app,” Pottinger testified.

“TikTok is already one of the most powerful media companies in American history. And it continues to grow,” she added. «It’s not just about dancing and kid stuff, it’s becoming a major source of news for a generation of Americans.»

kyle stewart and julia jester contributed.