Congressional Executive Commission on China Chair Chris Smith (R-NJ) blasted President Joe Biden for saying during his State of the Union address that he would work with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

During Biden’s speech, he alluded to competing with China and winning, but also said, “I’ve made clear with President Xi that we seek competition, not conflict,” and “I am committed to work with China where it can advance American interests and benefit the world.”

Smith said in an exclusive statement to Breitbart News:

President Biden’s promise to work with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)—and not the oppressed Chinese people—seriously enables the breathtaking cruelty of Xi Jinping’s dictatorship.

Xi and the CCP systematically murder, jail, torture, persecute and crush their own citizens and pose an existential military threat to their neighbors in the region and the United States.

Biden tried to sound tough against Xi in the speech, but instead delivered a confusing ad-libbed message. At one point Biden screamed:

Look. Let’s be clear: Winning the competition [with China] should unite all of us. We face serious challenges across the world. But in the past two years, democracies have become stronger, not weaker. Autocracies have grown weaker, not stronger. Name me a world leader who’d change places with Xi Jinping. Name me one! Name me one!

His State of the Union address came only days after the Chinese government floated a 200-foot spy balloon over the continental United States carrying a payload the size of a jetliner over sensitive military sites, only to be shot down over the ocean after four days of unfettered access.

Smith called for an “immediate and bold response” by the U.S. to the spy balloon.

In a statement earlier this week, he said:

The United States must respond boldly to the Chinese Communist Party’s outrageous violation of our national sovereignty. We cannot afford the Biden Administration’s continued weak nonresponse to the great and growing threat posed by the CCP to our national security and the livelihoods of the American people.

He called on Congress to pass his legislation, the China Trade Relations Act of 2023, which would strip China of its trade privileges in response to the CCP’s “outrageous human rights violations and its systematic economic espionage against the United States.”

“If China wishes to enjoy normal trade relations with the United States, the Chinese government must first respect our sovereignty and cease its atrocious human rights abuses including pervasive religious persecution, forced organ harvesting, transnational repression, and ongoing genocide against Uyghurs and other Central Asian minorities,” he said.

“The Biden Administration must abandon its fantasy that the CCP wants to cooperate with the United States before it’s too late,” he added.

House Republicans have kept their promise to hold China accountable after taking control of the House in November’s elections. This week, they held several hearingson the threat from China.

During the House Financial Services Committee hearing, Chairman Patrick McHenry (R-NC) said China was not an “ally or a strategic partner. They are our competitor and pose the single greatest threat to America’s global standing.”

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