In their debate Tuesday night, Donald Trump and Kamala Harris each sought to cast their opponent as a lackey of China. Bipartisan one-upmanship pushing conflict in the world’s most important geopolitical relationships was a fitting scene to land on “China Week,” House Speaker Mike Johnson’s bid to cast a mishmash of China-related bills as a concerted effort to “win” a confrontation with China. “China poses the greatest threat to global peace,” says Johnson, so “Congress must keep our focus on countering China with every tool at our disposal.”

Nearly 30 bills aimed at extirpating China’s presence in the United States and restricting its activities abroad will have a vote this week. None of the bills under consideration would encourage a constructive relationship between the two powers or mutually beneficial connections between them.

Republicans consistently vilify Democrats as weak on China, with Johnson complaining that “Joe Biden doesn’t treat China like an enemy.” Yet, as reflected in the Trump-Harris debate, Republican leadership is confident of bipartisan support for their confrontational approach. Indeed, by Wednesday night all of the China Week bills thus far considered—over 20—had passed. Most passed on a voice vote, which means they were so uncontested that no recorded vote was taken. Of the six bills on which a vote was recorded, three gained a majority of the Democratic caucus in favor.

That allows Johnson to boast of legislative achievements for a Republican caucus that has demonstrated an unusual inability to pass legislation—even by the extremely low standards that Congress usually maintains. It also allows him to pose as a statesman presiding over bipartisan concern for national security.

The problem is that the sharply imbalanced Republican approach toward China endangers both the future of the international system and hopes for progressive reforms in the United States. Republicans are setting a trap for Democrats, and most Democrats are taking the bait.

China Week has more to do with scoring “tough on China” political points than meaningfully addressing real problems in the world’s most important geopolitical relationship. Like the legislation that Congress approved in April to expropriate TikTok from its Chinese owners, many of the China Week bills focus on attacking Chinese involvement in a given problem rather than confronting the problem itself.

The BIOSECURE Act, for example, targets pharmaceutical companies’ misuse of human multiomic data but imposes restrictions only on those from officially designated adversary nations (China being the overriding concern). Just as the campaign against TikTok played on Americans’ revulsion against rampant privacy abuses among social-media companies but directed that anger against foreigners, so China Week encourages us to channel our anxieties toward China and away from inequalities and injustices issuing from elites closer to home. The outcome is not only a failure to address the underlying problems but an increasingly tense relationship with Beijing as well.

If you’re a Republican member of Congress, embracing a quixotic effort to exclude China from American society and international influence offers obvious political advantages. As the party’s prior emphasis on selfish individualism and unimpeded corporate power have fallen into disrepute, Republicans have turned with renewed vigor to long-standing traditions of uncritical nationalism, cruel nativism, and swaggering militarism. China provides a single villain against which to promote all these themes.

China is the first country in half a century capable of matching American economic dynamism and military might, throwing into doubt the sense of unchallenged dominance the United States has enjoyed since the end of the Cold War. Repudiating the idea that the two countries could advance together through exchange or healthy competition, the nationalists insist that all of China’s activities are a plot to enfeeble and displace the United States. China must not be allowed to gain power. As John Moolenaar, head of the House Select Committee on China, said, “This week, we will draw a line in the sand. With one voice, the US Congress will tell Xi Jinping, this far, and no further.”

If nationalists fear China’s power, nativists regard Chinese people in American society as culturally alien or perceive them as a sinister extension of the Chinese state. After years of economic and cultural exchange, Chinese and American society are interwoven. Chinese students, researchers, exporters, and investors are regular participants in US universities and markets. Chinese companies like TikTok and Shein have made an impact on American culture. All of these provide inviting targets for nativist campaigns to expel foreign influences. Among the China Week legislation, for example, one bill would reinstitute the Department of Justice’s China Initiative, a crackdown on Chinese connections to US research institutions that under Trump engaged in widespread racial profiling and baseless prosecutions against professors who had pursued joint research with their Chinese colleagues.