WASHINGTON -- U.S. Rep. French Hill, R-Ark., on Tuesday led a panel discussion concerning China's economy and perceptions of its economic future.
The Center for Strategic and International Studies -- a policy entity focused on national security and the United States' international standing -- hosted the event at its Washington, D.C., headquarters. The organization held the discussion as part of its Beyond the SCIF series highlighting the work of the House of Representatives Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.
Hill, of Little Rock, and fellow Arkansas Republican Rep. Rick Crawford of Jonesboro serve on the House Intelligence Committee. Hill's legislative responsibilities also include serving as vice chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, in which he leads its subcommittee on cryptocurrencies and digital assets.
"Our panelists will attempt to pull back the bamboo curtain and address projections of Chinese economic growth, factors that affect it, and events that could alter or change those current projections," Hill said at the start of Tuesday's panel.
The House Intelligence Committee helped organize the discussion. While other congressional committees often conduct hearings and meetings in open spaces, the Senate and House intelligence committees do not operate in such a setting given the sensitivity of classified information. Reviews take place in a sensitive compartmented information facility, referred to as a SCIF.
"No one gets to hear or see the work that we are doing," said Chairman Mike Turner, R-Ohio. "Here, we get to engage directly with policymakers and those that contribute to the academic world so we can take that information with us and back into the work that we are doing."
The panel occurred two weeks after a meeting between President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping in San Francisco. The leaders discussed cooperation in addressing illicit drug manufacturing and reached terms on resuming military-to-military communication. Biden reiterated the United States' support for Ukraine and Israel, and its commitment to protecting Taiwan and other Indo-Pacific allies.
The event also happened amid concerns regarding China's economy. The world's second-largest economy is no longer dealing with interruptions related to the coronavirus pandemic, but China's economy is showing concerning signs because of a sluggish real estate market and high youth unemployment rate.
"We all assumed over the last decade and a half that China would gradually converge toward global norms of behavior in economic and, to a certain extent, political realms," said Logan Wright, a partner at Rhodium Group who leads its China Markets Research efforts.
"That hasn't happened, and that reversal has required everyone to start to reappraise what the appropriate safeguards are to insulate the Western economies from absolutely unregulated flows from trade and investment between China and the rest of the world."
Jude Blanchette, the center's Freeman Chair in China Studies, said companies and analysts are not surprised by China's economic state, noting both parties have been aware of "the amount of duct tape holding this system together."
"China's economy 20 years ago was much, much smaller and much less globally integrated, and the impact of domestic dysfunction was less widely felt," he said. "I think now the significant concern is understanding how an increasingly dysfunctional Chinese economic model is going to reverberate throughout the globe."
An issue in understanding China's economic forecast is the lack of available data; financial information is becoming difficult to access in an approach Blanchette described as an "epistemological closing."
The International Monetary Fund announced earlier this month its projection of China's economy growing by 5.4% this year, citing new economic policies supporting "new engines of growth" while mitigating negative returns.
The global financial body additionally projected slower growth in 2024 related to the property sector and muted demand.
"I think what they're trying to do, if you press them, is trying to predict what Beijing is going to publish, not what the actual growth rate is," Wright argued regarding the International Monetary Fund's report.
"I agree with Logan," Blanchette added. "It's just throwing to the receiver."
Hill traveled with a congressional delegation to Japan and South Korea in February to discuss, in part, international security and China's influence. The Little Rock lawmaker -- who participated in the trip as part of the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission -- described Japan and South Korea as "two of our most important trading partners" with proximity to China's economic and military presence.