On Jan. 30, government professor Jennifer Lind testified in front of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in a hearing titled “The Malign Influence of the People’s Republic of China at Home and Abroad: Recommendations for Policy Makers.” During the hearing, Lind, who specializes in United States-China relations, spoke about China’s foreign influence, both malign and mundane. The Dartmouth sat down with Lind to discuss her first time experience testifying in front of the committee and how she believes the United States should use lessons from great power politics — competition between sovereign states with significant economic and military strength — to respond to China’s growing influence on U.S. citizens.
How did you come to testify before Congress?
JL: I met New Hampshire Democratic Sen. and Senate Foreign Relations Committee minority leader Jeanne Shaheen when she came and visited campus in November 2024. The faculty had a private meeting with her, where she went back and forth with us about our areas of expertise in foreign relations. I spoke with her on matters related to East Asia, particularly U.S.-China relations, the issues surrounding the Korean Peninsula and a wide range of other issues. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee is interested in issues relating to China, so she invited me to testify. This is the first hearing with the new roster of committee members and Republican majority leaders. Committee staffers told me that this is a sign that China is a priority for the committee.
How did you prepare to testify?
JL: I spent a long time trying to figure out the argument that I wanted to get across. What is the new perspective that I would bring to the conversation? There’s already a really terrific set of reports and articles about how China is trying to build influence, which we refer to as China’s “influence operations.” I haven’t done major research projects into this particular issue, but what I bring to the conversation is a perspective of great power politics.
How was the experience of testifying? Were there any surprises?
JL: There was a nice Dartmouth posse that turned up. I had a student of mine who came because she’s doing an internship in Washington, D.C. There was a former student there who now works for the committee minority staff. It was really fun to see Dartmouth students and Sen. Shaheen there. The experience had this great Dartmouth energy to it.
Testifying itself was really stressful. The senators are interested in a very wide range of Chinese activities. At any moment, I could be asked any question even tangentially related to China. I prepared for some questions, but then other questions came up and I just said, “Okay, I guess we’re talking about that now.” I didn’t realize this would be the case, so it was mentally very, very challenging. It made for a really fascinating experience.
What topics did senators ask you about?
JL: The questions ranged all over the place. Because of the timing of the hearing, which came very recently after President Donald Trump’s executive order temporarily suspending U.S. foreign aid, many Democratic senators were deeply concerned about that issue. They asked if we are harming our ability to compete with China for influence in the world if we’re not giving out foreign aid. It was clear that some senators had particular regional interests. For example, we had an interesting exchange about Latin America after Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., raised the issue. I find that really interesting to think back on after Panama has been very much in the news this week. Clearly the hearing was well-timed. Sometimes a question would be really narrow — a pet issue of a particular senator.
What do you hope the senators took away from your testimony?
JL: My main message is that China’s influence operations fit into a broader strategic interaction between the United States and China. We should, of course, defend ourselves and protect our interests, intellectual property and citizens. But I was also encouraging U.S. lawmakers to think about how we can impose costs on China for their covert, illegal behavior. My testimony encouraged them to go beyond a reactive approach and ask how we might encourage China to restrain itself. There have to be some Chinese behaviors — abducting or coercing American citizens, for example — that we say, “You can’t do that, and we’re going to impose high costs on you if you do.”
In your testimony, you highlighted the importance of upholding American values when responding to potential Chinese influence. What are some potential missteps that the United States should try to avoid?
JL: I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about human rights violations, how communities are affected and how those violations are remembered. In the past 15 to 20 years, the field of international relations has seen China become a competitor to the United States. One of my early thoughts was “this is not good” because we have a large diaspora of Chinese Americans here. This diaspora enriches our culture and economy and is part of the fabric of our society. When we look at previous great power competitions, we often see that such groups get caught in the crossfire and become victims of that competition. When the United States and Japan were fighting during World War II, the U.S. government let millions of Japanese Americans down by deciding that they were a threat. When I was thinking about the potential for a U.S.-China competition, one thing that’s worried me for a while is, “Are we going to fail our citizens again?”
I raised this issue in my testimony to the committee. Hopefully, we’ve learned a lot from our previous failures. The facts that Chinese Americans are more politically empowered or that we have this strong civil society today convey more optimism. At universities, we think very keenly about exclusion and discrimination. It’s important to me that these challenges don’t get lost in the current conversation and future conversations that we’re having about China.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
