[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 66 (Tuesday, May 24, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: May 24, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
WOMEN AND CHILDREN ARE EXPLOITED IN CHINA AS PRESIDENT CLINTON CODDLES 
                            THEIR OPPRESSORS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
February 11, 1994, the gentleman from New Jersey [Mr. Smith] is 
recognized during morning business for 5 minutes.
  Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Madam Speaker, for the last year and a half 
one foreign affairs crisis after another has burst onto the world 
stage, and this administration always seems to be unprepared, 
indecisive, and sadly lacking principle.
  This morning I want to highlight but one example of how Mr. Clinton's 
foreign policy is in disarray. Mr. Clinton arrived in Washington 16 
months ago, and his penchant for obfuscation and indecision is causing 
people around the globe to question and to lose faith in the ability of 
the United States to stand firm for what is right, for what is 
honorable and true, to fight even for our own national interests and to 
base decisions on a consistent human rights agenda.
  United States relations with China is but one example. Mr. Clinton 
has failed, in my view, to even hold to his own words regarding respect 
for human rights.
  The White House has become a Tower of Babel, and as we look back over 
the past year, we saw many voices speaking, sometimes pro-human rights 
linkage, sometimes against it. At other times they only emphasized 
certain human rights, diminishing the others. When you take it all 
together, the White House has been a virtual Tower of Babel speaking 
with so many tongues.
  This is also true in the area of the population control program in 
the People's Republic of China, one of the most heinous crimes being 
committed against women today, crimes of gender, crimes against women, 
the exploitation of women, and yet this administration has not only 
been silent, paying only lip service to it, but its actions have spoken 
much louder in the opposite direction.
  Madam Speaker, each year population control fanatics in China 
forcibly abort about 10 million children, and that is each year, out of 
approximately 13 million annual Chinese abortions. That is as many 
children per year as the combined totals of the entire populations of 
Nicaragua and El Salvador.
  Forced abortion, properly construed to be a crime against humanity at 
the Nuremberg war crimes trials, is today employed with chilling 
effectiveness and unbearable pain, especially against women. Women in 
China are required to obtain a birth coupon, because conceiving a child 
is out of bounds if she is not given permission by the Government.
  The New York Times pointed out in its April 25, 1993 expose that when 
the Chinese authorities discover an unauthorized pregnancy, in other 
words, an illegal pregnancy, they normally apply a daily dose of 
threats and browbeating. Those who resist are often assessed massive 
fines, and many times, this is many times, their per-capita income.
  Peasants in many provinces say their homes are routinely knocked down 
if the fines are not paid, the Times reported.
  Clearly the population gestapo and their use of coercion wears down 
many women. They finally give up, because they cannot fight back. They 
know they cannot win. And yet this administration has not stood by 
those women.
  In December 1993, the Chinese Government also issued a draft eugenics 
law which would nationalize discrimination against the handicapped, 
much of which is already in effect at the provincial level. Taking a 
page right out of Nazi Germany, the Chinese Government is aggressively 
implementing forced abortion against handicapped children simply 
because they may be suffering from some anomaly like Down's syndrome.
  When the rest of the world moves to protect the rights and dignity of 
handicapped persons, China is seeking ways to exterminate them. Sadly, 
again, the Clinton administration has turned its back on this massive 
exploitation of women and of children.
  Syndicated columnist Bob Novak in yesterday's Washington Post 
provided a very, very distressing insight into this daily occurrence. 
He points out:

       On April 25, Alan Lin, a Chinese immigrant working for a 
     bank in Concord, California, called Senator Dianne 
     Feinstein's office pleading for help. His 5-months-pregnant 
     wife in China faced abortion demanded by the Communist 
     authorities. Could the Senator prod the INS to grant a visa?

  As the story goes on to say, and I urge Members to read this, it goes 
on to say that he, on behalf of his wife, was met with deaf ears on 
behalf of or by the Senator from California and also, sadly to say, by 
the administration.
  Madam Speaker, I am including that newspaper article at this point in 
the Record as follows:

                [From the Washington Post, May 23, 1994]

                        Forced Abortion in China

                          (By Robert D. Novak)

       On April 28, Alan Wanrong Lin, a Chinese immigrant working 
     for a bank in Concord, Calif., called the San Francisco 
     office of Sen. Dianne Feinstein pleading for help. His five-
     months pregnant wife in China faced an abortion demanded by 
     Communist authorities. Could the senator prod the Immigration 
     and Naturalization Service bureaucrats to grant Mrs. Lin a 
     visa to enter the United States?
       According to a memo Lin typed at 8 o'clock the next 
     morning, David Swerdlick, the Democratic senator's case 
     officer, ``told me not to waste time.'' The aide was quoted 
     as saying: ``The senator is not interested in the birth-
     control policies in another country.''
       Lin said Swerdlick wanted him to ``give up,'' adding: ``He 
     make me feel like that I am fighting against the senator and 
     the president, but I only want to fight the inhuman Chinese 
     government.'' Fearing the Chinese would order a ``delayed 
     abortion to kill my wife,'' he told her to succumb. The baby 
     was aborted that day, April 29.
       This abortion, one of millions forced by China's draconian 
     birth-control policy, shows what happens in official U.S. 
     circles when human rights and abortion rights collide. The 
     administration and its congressional allies threaten to sever 
     trading relations with China if it does not treat its 
     citizens more kindly, but they flinch from an antiabortion 
     posture.
       It is a dilemma for well-intended liberals such as 
     Feinstein: how to press China for a more humane treatment of 
     its citizens while maintaining noninterference with abortion 
     policies around the world.
       Feinstein on Feb. 1 voted to continue pressing for human-
     rights progress in China. ``Some would say,'' she said, 
     ``that human rights are a matter of a country's internal 
     affairs. However, I believe we are our brother's keepers.''
       But Feinstein has introduced a bill to repeal Section 4 of 
     President Bush's Executive Order No. 12711, of Jan. 29, 1990. 
     She proposed ending ``enhanced consideration'' for 
     immigration of persons fleeing a country because of ``forced 
     abortion or coerced sterilization.'' Actually, under 
     President Clinton, Bush's mandate has not been complied 
     with--as Lin soon found out.
       His wife is 22 years old--one year too young to suit Fujian 
     Province requirements for a ``birth license.'' To avoid a 
     forced abortion, she went into hiding in Fuzhou City while 
     awaiting a U.S. visa--a process that will take at least 
     another year. To escape Chinese birth-control police, the 
     Lins asked for her immediate entry on a ``humanitarian 
     parole.''
       On April 4, 15 Democratic and 37 Republican congressmen 
     wrote Attorney General Janet Reno pleading for help. GOP Rep. 
     Christopher Smith tried repeatedly to get the attorney 
     general on the telephone.
       On April 25, the INS district director in Bangkok denied 
     the Lins' request on grounds it was not based on ``emergency 
     conditions.''
       After I noted on television May 7 the Feinstein office's 
     treatment of the Lins, the senator expressed shock. Her case 
     worker denied to his superior the words attributed to him by 
     Lin.
       On May 10 Feinstein wrote Lin regretting that ``my staff 
     did not bring your plea to my attention'' and added this 
     postscript in her own hand: ``I am so sorry!''
       On May 11, she wrote Secretary of State Warren Christopher, 
     Reno and INS Commissioner Doris Meissner. Calling the 
     abortion a ``personal tragedy,'' Feinstein said: ``The 
     suffering they have endured will never be erased, but the 
     United States can still act now to bring them together 
     immediately.''
       U.S. authorities blame the Lins for their own misery.
       ``We did not believe that this would have been required by 
     the Fuzhou City government authorities,'' Assistant Attorney 
     General Sheila F. Anthony argued. ``We regret that Mr. and 
     Mrs. Lin determined that she should undergo the abortion.''
       But Steven W. Mosher, an authority on Chinese birth-control 
     methods, denies U.S. government arguments that no abortion 
     would have been forced. He contends that ``coercion is not 
     limited to a handful of offending provinces or officials but 
     is found throughout China.'' Feinstein's letter to Lin noted 
     that ``your wife underwent surgery to terminate her pregnancy 
     as ordered by the Chinese government.''
       ``I still feel that there are still a lot of nice and 
     humanitarian people,'' Lin wrote, ``* * * even though [they 
     are] weaker than the evil power.'' What is hard for him to 
     understand is how the officials of his new country could 
     tolerate the evil.

                              {time}  1050

  I tried repeatedly to get Attorney General Janet Reno on the phone to 
ask, to plead that this poor woman with a 5-month-old baby in her womb, 
that she be given a humanitarian parole. She was already approved for a 
visa. Already approved. It was a matter of expediting the timetable. 
She was turned down. This administration could not care less.
  Madam Speaker, there are many, many examples of how this 
administration has turned its back on Chinese women. The Justice 
Department has suppressed a Bush administration regulation that would 
have provided enhanced consideration for others seeking asylum. It has 
doubled the amount of money, provided $100 million to the United 
Nations Population Fund [UNFPA], an organization that has a hand-in-
glove relationship with the Chinese Government.
  I suggest that my colleagues ask themselves the following question: 
If you were a Chinese leader witnessing these actions, would you take 
the administration's professed concern about human rights in China 
seriously?
  The continued coercive measures used to enforce the population 
control program and the eugenics policy, which scholars from the United 
States Holocaust Museum have likened to Nazi-era programs and which 
would target the most vulnerable members of Chinese society, have 
failed to arouse any meaningful response from the Clinton 
administration. Sure, the Secretary of State has said that he is 
appalled by news reports of these atrocities but lip-service is not 
enough. I truly believe that it is fair to ask whether President 
Clinton is genuinely concerned about the rampant practices of forced 
and eugenic abortion in China.
  None of us can close our eyes to, squint, or in any way downplay or 
overlook the abysmal human rights record of the People's Republic of 
China. Let us be candid, China has been and remains a dictatorship--its 
leaders routinely and cruelly violate the rights of its citizens and 
the trend is ominously moving in precisely the wrong direction. The 
United States Department of State in the annual Country Report on Human 
Rights Practices says that China's ``overall human rights record in 
1993 fell far short of internationally accepted norms''--not just 
short, far short.
  In the face of this ongoing repression, the Chinese Government is 
getting mixed signals from the Clinton administration regarding its 
seriousness about human rights. We are certainly not getting a mixed 
message from the People's Republic of China. The human rights record of 
that country has continued to decline in the past year. Not only that, 
the Chinese Government has chosen times and opportunities to show their 
contempt for United States commitment to human rights which have been 
most embarrassing.
  Madam Speaker, during my visit to China in January I attended a Mass 
celebrated by Bishop Su Zhi Ming. Bishop Su has spent 15 years in 
Chinese prisons and suffers physical disability because of the 
beatings, torture, and mistreatment at the hands of security police. 
Shortly after our visit, on January 20, the very day that Secretary 
Bentsen was in China discussing the future of United States-Sino 
relations, Bishop Su was arrested and detained for 9 days. He was 
interrogated at length about his meeting with us. His crime--leading a 
worship service for foreigners.
  Bishop Pei was also to say Mass for our delegation. We were told that 
he had to go for an emergency anointing of the sick. I have recently 
found out that the person who came to get him was actually a security 
officer who took Bishop Pei to the police offices so that he could not 
say Mass for our delegation.
  Another Catholic priest, Father Wei Jingyi, was also arrested on 
January 20. His whereabouts are unknown. Even now, the authorities deny 
he is being detained, although they have accepted clothing for him from 
his sister. According to information I received, it is believed that he 
is being held because of his position in the underground Catholic 
Church and that the Government is trying to obtain information from 
him.
  New religious laws which further restrict the religious activity of 
foreigners and Chinese were issued on January 28. These laws outlaw 
activities even done in the privacy of one's home and give the green 
light to security policy to arrest, imprison, and torture religious 
believers. The police have already moved to enforce these laws. One 
victim has been Rev. Dennis Balcombe, an American citizen, who was 
detained for 4 days, unable to contact the U.S. Embassy. Before he was 
finally deported, all of his belongings were confiscated.
  All religious believers in China are asking for is the ability to 
worship freely and openly. Right now those who do not belong to the 
government-sponsored churches have no place to worship, many of them 
are denied housing and work permits, and countless numbers are 
harassed, detained, tortured--and some have been martyred for their 
faith.
  The U.S. Government needs to speak out clearly, consistently and 
unequivocally about these deplorable abuses of fundamental human 
rights. In addition, we need ot take action which conveys our 
seriousness about these issues. The constant vacillation by the Clinton 
administration--not only toward China but throughout the world--
severely undermines our ability to bring about improvements in these 
tragic human rights conditions.
  Madam Speaker, this administration has failed to create a coherent 
foreign policy. The President's decisionmaking process results in 
confusion--confusion among U.S. policymakers, confusion among our 
allies, and the exploitation of that confusion by our adversaries. When 
foreign policy is in such disarray, people throughout the world lose. 
Most serious of all, Madam Speaker, the American people lose.

                          ____________________