China's expansion of its presence in the Western Hemisphere, including an increase in its ground satellites in South America to communicate with its satellites in space, is of great concern, Rep. Mike Gallagher told Fox News' "Sunday Morning Futures."
The Wisconsin Republican, chair of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), warned that after "a couple of decades of neglect, we've allowed the CCP to turn the Monroe Doctrine into the Mao Doctrine."
"It's time that we pay attention to our own backyard. For a while, we just got complacent. ... We were lucky to have nonhostile neighbors. We had two oceans surrounding us. We felt like we had this sense of security in our own backyard," he said.
"The CCP is now exploiting that complacency in order to encroach on our territory, in my view, as part of an effort to undermine America and displace us as the global leader."
Gallagher said signs of that include Beijing's expansion of its satellite capabilities in South America, which gives China a closer look at the United States, and "buying up port facilities" in the U.S.
"In terms of the smart cranes that they own, they have something like 90% of the global market share. A lot of that is concentrated in our own ports, as well as in ports in South and Central America. We had the report last year of a massive potential spy base to be located in Cuba, and then ... this phenomenon of sort of pink or leftist red governments popping up all over our Southern Hemisphere," the congressman said.