[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 13 (Monday, January 23, 1995)]
[House]
[Page H487]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




          THE GANGSTERS OF CHINA AND BURMA AND THE TRADE ISSUE

  (Mr. ROHRABACHER asked and was given permission to address the House 
for 1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks, and include 
extraneous material.)
  Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, America is grasping for principles to 
guide our foreign policy decisionmaking in the post-cold-war world. Let 
me suggest two simple standards. We should be for freedom, and we 
should be against aggression.
  The current administration has decoupled any discussion about trade 
with any consideration of human rights. This is wrong, and it does not 
work. By winking at the dictator in Beijing, we have encouraged that 
gangster regime to go on to even further criminal activities.
  I am placing into the Record an editorial of the Wall Street Journal 
detailing the results of an alignment between the gangster regimes in 
Peking, China, and in Burma.
  As for America, we should be on the side of those who are struggling 
for freedom in Burma and China. In
 the long run, it is not only what is right but it is what will work 
for the betterment of the entire world.

  Mr. Speaker, the information from the Wall Street Journal to which I 
referred is as follows:

             [From the Wall Street Journal, Jan. 11, 1995]

                            Asia's Drug War

       Trade and information aren't the only things that have gone 
     global. Try drug addiction. Around the world, the U.S. is 
     often portrayed as a society sinking under the weight of drug 
     abuse. But where the U.S. has about 600,000 heroin addicts, 
     Thailand probably has that number in Chiang Mai and Chiang 
     Rai provinces alone. According to the Straits Times, 
     Singapore is treating 7,700 addicts (up from 5,700 in 1990). 
     Assuming, improbably, that these are the only ones, Singapore 
     still has an addiction rate 12% higher than the U.S. Malaysia 
     claims about 100,000 addicts, Taiwan about 50,000, and the 
     standard estimate for Vietnam is 500,000.
       Without much doubt these figures understate the severity of 
     the problem in some countries. When Taiwan seized 1,114 kilos 
     of heroin in 1993, officials claimed the bulk was for 
     domestic consumption. Hong Kong clinics have registered a 50% 
     jump in female addicts since 1993, which they attribute to 
     the price of a gram of heroin plummeting to $40, half the 
     price of three years ago.
       While the big money is made on the streets of New York and 
     Los Angeles, most of Asia's opium is consumed in Asia. So the 
     explosion in production in the Golden Triangle, especially 
     Burma, is deeply troubling. Opium output has trebled since 
     1988, to about 3,500 tons, according to Asian officials. 
     Prosecutions are still launched against longtime traffickers 
     in places like Thailand, but in fact the business has rapidly 
     migrated into the hands of new Chinese gangs.
       The quality has gone up, and the purity has improved by a 
     factor of 1,000% or more. To understand why, look no farther 
     than Burma's emergence as China's economic satellite.
       In the late 1980s, China began courting the Burmese regime, 
     then in bad odor with the rest of the world for slaughtering 
     hundreds of demonstrators. Beijing dropped its support of the 
     Communist Party of Burma and other ethnic rebel groups and 
     opened the long Sino-Burmese border to trade. That pried the 
     lid from a Pandora's Box whose contents are now spilling out 
     into the world through China.
       The ex-insurgents, led by the Wa tribal followers of 
     Burma's Communists, nowadays devote themselves to the heroin 
     business. Dozens of refineries have opened along the border, 
     with the drugs moving overland by courier through China and 
     finally out via Hong Kong and Taiwan. These mainland routes 
     have already eclipsed Burmese drug warlord Khun Sa and the 
     Thai export routes under his control.
       For the time being, the Rangoon government has reached 
     cease-fires with most of the ethic rebels in the north, 
     Rangoon leaves them to their drug trafficking, and probably 
     even rakes off a share of the profit, while concentrating its 
     main energies on building up the army and crushing urban 
     dissent. No doubt these cease-fires are temporary: The 
     Burmese military is reportedly set to renew its offensive 
     against the Khun Sa operation, armed with a fresh supply of 
     weapons from Beijing. In time, the army probably hopes to 
     subdue the rest of Burma's minorities as well.
       But that goal has eluded the Burmese military for 50 years 
     and for now the local militias still call the shots in the 
     mountainous north, Poppy cultivation has boomed under the 
     spur of competition for buyers. For their part, the Chinese 
     see their Burmese clients as an economic and military 
     bridgehead into Southeast Asia. What they got in the bargain 
     was an opium bridgehead into China.
       Junkies are suddenly proliferating along the drug routes 
     through Yunnan and Guangxi, in the inland provinces and even 
     among Beijing's yuppies. China recently admitting to having 
     300,000 ``registered'' addicts and called the situation 
     ``very grim.'' Health officials put the real number at 2.5 
     million. In 1992, the People's Armed Police was sent in to 
     clean out a smuggling center protected by corrupt Yunnan 
     officials. The battle lasted 11 weeks and netted nearly 1,000 
     kilos of drugs.
       China hasn't forgotten that tens of millions were junkies 
     early in the century. Biochemistry being what it is, the 
     simple fact of drugs being available is likely to produce a 
     growing addiction crisis. When Lee Brown of the U.S. Office 
     of National Drug Control Policy toured the region last June, 
     several governments urged him to restart anti-narcotics 
     cooperation with Burma. But the Burmese regime is still in 
     the doghouse with Congress over its human rights record and 
     the detention of Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi.
       In any case, the old school, which sees U.S. and European 
     consumers as the main drivers of the heroin trade, may be out 
     of date, Malaysia recently nabbed a high-school-age heroin 
     dealer. Police suspect that pushers are trying to lock in a 
     new clientele among upwardly mobile young users. Asia's 
     wealth is driving a big part of the business these days. And 
     while the U.S. can help, China is the real key to Asia's 
     developing drug crisis.
     

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