A new House committee focused on China held its first hearing Tuesday, sketching out the threat it says Beijing poses to U.S. interests and values and calling for a concerted U.S. government response.

“We may call this a ‘strategic competition,’” said Rep. Mike Gallagher (R., Wis.) chairman of the Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, opening the hearing. “But this is not a polite tennis match. This is an existential struggle over what life will look like in the 21st century, and the most fundamental freedoms are at stake.” 

The committee heard testimony from former national security officials, a Chinese democracy activist and a representative of a U.S. manufacturing association. Their testimony ranged widely—from repression of human rights to China’s military and economic coercion against its neighbors.

While much of the testimony and analysis weren’t new, the committee’s presentation was intended to create a forceful message, according to people involved in the planning. Held in the evening to draw more public attention, the hearing featured graphics on the U.S. trade deficits with China and loss of manufacturing jobs and videos cataloging the repressive policies of the Chinese Communist Party, or CCP, and Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s vision of displacing the U.S. as the world’s superpower.