Debate night: What the candidates are saying on China

What they're saying:

• Mayor Pete Buttigieg: "We have to recognize that the China challenge is a serious one. This is not something to dismiss or waive away. China is using technology for the perfection of dictatorship. Manufacturers and especially farmers are hurting. Tariffs are taxes and Americans pay $800 more a year because of the tariffs. Meanwhile, China is investing so they could soon be able to run circles around us in artificial intelligence and this president is fixated on the relationship as if all that mattered was the balance on dishwashers. We have a moment when their authoritarian model is an alternative to ours because ours looks so chaotic because of internal divisions. The biggest thing we have to do is invest in our own domestic competitiveness."
• Sen. Michael Bennet: "The president has been right to push back on China, but has done it in completely the wrong way. We should mobilize the entire rest of the world who all have a shared interest in pushing back on China's mecantilist trade policies and I think we can do that."
• Andrew Yang: "The tariffs and the trade war are just punishing businesses and producers and workers on both sides... We need to crack down on Chinese malfeasance in the trade relationship, but the tariffs and the trade war are the wrong way to go."

• "After nearly a month of stonewalling, it appears clear that the President has chosen the path of defiance, obstruction, and cover-up," the letter reads.

The state of play: Several White House officials have told Axios' Alayna Treene that the administration has no plans of complying with the committees' demands for interviews or documents without a full House vote formally approving an impeachment inquiry.

The big picture: The Trump administration's initial refusal to turn over the whistleblower complaint on the president's interactions with Ukraine is what led House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to finally support a formal impeachment inquiry.

Go deeper: Trump letter dares Pelosi to hold vote on impeachment inquiry

• Johnson asked the Justice Department earlier this week to look into links between Ukraine and Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign. His letter questioned the narrative that Biden's actions in Ukraine had nothing to do with his son's connection.
• However, it was also discovered that he signed onto a 2016 letter that mirrored Biden's work to reform Ukraine's prosecutor general and judiciary.
• There is no evidence that Biden's reform work in Ukraine was to protect his son's business dealings, as the president and some of his allies allege, or that he committed any form of corruption.

The state of play: Sondland, a Trump political appointee who donated $1 million to the president's inaugural committee, denied that there was a quid pro quo between the Trump administration and Ukraine's government in a series of text messages that former Ukraine special envoy Kurt Volker provided to a group of House committees investigating the Trump-Ukraine matter.

• "I think it’s crazy to withhold security assistance for help with a political campaign," Bill Taylor, the top U.S. diplomat to Ukraine, texted Sondland.
• Sondland texted back: "Bill, I believe you are incorrect about President Trump's intentions. The President has been crystal clear no quid pro quo's of any kind."
• The New York Times reported that Sondland's response came only after he spoke to the president.

Go deeper: House committees release texts from former Ukraine envoy Kurt Volker