Rep. Doug Collins on holding Chinese Communist Party accountable for coronavirus
Congressman Doug Collins discusses introducing legislation to hold the Chinese Communist Party accountable for coronavirus pandemic.
Rep. Doug Collins, R-Ga., discussed legislation he introduced targeting China during an exclusive interview on “Sunday Morning Futures,” warning that if “China decides they want to be a world economic power, they also have to be a responsible world economic power.”
“They can’t treat the world like they treat their citizens, which is to keep them under oppression and make them believe every bit of communist doctrine that they want [them] to believe,” the Georgia Republican lawmaker told host Maria Bartiromo on Sunday.
House Republicans were joining their colleagues in the Senate in introducing a bill that would authorize President Trump to slap sanctions on China if it refused to cooperate on an international probe into the beginnings of the coronavirus pandemic.
“We’re holding China accountable for the debacle that was the COVID situation, in which internally, they were telling people one thing, but letting international travel happen. They were not warning the World Health Organization [WHO], they were not being very honest about what was going on,” Collins told Fox News in an interview Thursday.
On Sunday, he told Bartiromo, “What we’re going to do is say, ‘If you want to actually be a part of the world, you need to be out there and give a full accounting, an international accounting of what you did and what you did not do.”
He went on to say, “It has become very apparent that they were much more willing to control [COVID-19] internally, but yet spread it across the world.”
Collins added, “China has a problem and the problem is, they can’t be honest with themselves and they can’t be honest with the international community.”
He explained that the legislation would “give the president a way to sanction, not tie his hands, but give him every tool in the toolbox to get them to compete in a way that is fair in the international market and if they don’t, then fine, they’ll suffer the consequences for it.”
Collins made the comments after China’s state-run media targeted congressional Republicans for their outspoken stance against the nation’s government and their condemnation of the country’s nefarious actions concerning the novel coronavirus outbreak.
An article posted on the Global Times, a branch of the Communist Party of China’s People’s Daily, claimed the nation was “extremely dissatisfied with the abuse of litigation” by U.S. leadership, “and is considering punitive countermeasures” against U.S. individuals, entities and state officials.
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The Times article named GOP Sens. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., and Tom Cotton, R-Ark., along with two other Republican members of Congress, writing that they will be added to China’s sanctions list for their hardline political stances.
Bartiromo noted that Collins’ name was not mentioned and asked him if he worried his bill would spark consequences.
“I hope the Communist Party is watching. My name is Doug Collins, they can come after me whenever they want to,” he said in response.
“I’m going to stand with America,” Collins continued, adding that he was “tired of [China] trying to steal pharmaceuticals” and was “tired of letting their own country be locked down while they send people out of the country and then they lie about it to the world.”
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Collins went on to say, “the Communist Party must realize that they may be able to try to keep their own people down, but that regime is bound and destined to fail.”
He told Bartiromo, “We need to make sure that if you’re going to have an economic partner in the world, they have to be able to compete like everybody else does and tell the truth.”
Fox News’ Nick Givas, Adam Shaw and Fox Business’ Maria Bartiromo contributed to this report.
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