Washington: Tuesday night will mark the first hearing of a new US congressional select committee on competition with China. Bilateral relations have been tense in the weeks since a suspected spy balloon flying over North America was shot down.

Representative Mike Gallagher, the Republican chairman of the House of Representatives Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, told reporters on a call prior to the hearing, "We want to lead with a human rights focused, values focused agenda."

The hearing, the first of many during the next two years that the Republicans will be in control of the House, is what he sees as part of an effort to persuade Americans to care about competing with China and to "selectively decouple" the US and Chinese economies.

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even we call it a strategic competition, it is not not tennis tennis. we call it call we call we call it we call it we call we call we call we call we In a separate news briefing on Tuesday morning, Gallagher stated that "this is an existential struggle over what kind of world we want to live in.

Gallagher held a number of activities leading up to the hearing to raise awareness of rights issues, including a rally on Saturday in front of what US authorities refer to as an illegal Chinese Communist Party "police station" in New York.

Inquiring about such purported police outposts, Gallagher last week sent a letter to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Even though he claimed on Monday that he hadn't heard back, he anticipated FBI Director Christopher Wray would address the panel.

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Four witnesses will testify at the hearing on Tuesday at 7 p.m. EST (0100 GMT), including Matt Pottinger, a longtime China hawk and former deputy national security adviser to Republican President Donald Trump, and retired Army lieutenant general H.R. McMaster.

Pottinger cautioned that the United States had no justification for being "fooled" about Chinese leader Xi Jinping's "deep hostility towards the democratic West and the liberal international order" in written testimony seen by Reuters prior to the hearing.

In addition, he stated that the committee must "stand up against bigotry and discrimination here at home" in order to protect the rights of Chinese Americans.

The freedoms that so clearly distinguish the American way of life from the increasingly oppressive climate in China today should be protected for Chinese nationals who are studying and working in the United States, Pottinger wrote.

Despite the committee's bipartisan makeup, some Democratic lawmakers have expressed concern that it might encourage anti-Asian prejudice in the country.

Scott Paul, the head of the Alliance for American Manufacturing, and Tong Yi, the secretary of a well-known Chinese dissident who spent more than two years in prison, will also give testimony.

One of the few truly unifying views in the bitterly divided US Congress is the need for tougher sanctions against Beijing, with both Republicans and President Joe Biden's Democrats calling for greater efforts.

Over the past six years, we have been able to cooperate even in a highly polarised and divisive time, according to Gallagher, a senior member of the House Armed Services Committee and a former Marine counterintelligence officer.

Tensions between the US and China have risen significantly recently as a result of China's more assertive military posture towards Taiwan, rumours that China may be supporting Russia's war against Ukraine, and the US shooting down a Chinese balloon on February 4 on suspicion of espionage over US territory.

Beijing has refuted the claim that the balloon contained government spies.

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After the party took over the House in January, Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy promised he would establish a select committee with a China-related focus.

There are 11 Democrats and 13 Republicans on the select committee. It will not draught legislation, but it will highlight the competition between China and the US on a number of fronts and offer legislative recommendations.