[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 118 (Thursday, July 20, 1995)]
[House]
[Pages H7272-H7273]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                              {time}  1130

  Mr. SOLOMON. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the very distinguished 
gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Manzullo], a member of the Committee on 
International Relations.
  Mr. MANZULLO. Mr. Chairman, the Bereuter resolution moves this 
country in the direction of putting additional pressure on China in 
terms of human rights violations. We can do that, and we can also have 
MFN status with China.
  This country exports more than $9 billion a year of goods to China. 
That is close to 200,000 jobs in this country. If we do not have MFN 
status with China, that will be only one of eight countries with which 
we have no MFN status with in the entire world.
  Last year, I spent an entire day with Counsel General Wang Li from 
China in the 16th district in Illinois, which has 1,500 factories. He 
told me there are 300 cities in China that have in excess of 1 million 
people. Seventy-five percent of those cities do not have an airport, 
and he said that China is in the process of building over 200 airports. 
This is the time to expand our trade with China.
  Look what happened this past week. China signed a $1 billion 
agreement with Mercedes-Benz in a joint partnership to build the 
minivan in China. That could have been signed with Chrysler, and I hope 
one day eventually that will happen. What we have to do is to keep open 
the channels of communication.
  To deny MFN status would be to close that avenue.
  President Nixon said in a letter to President Bush in 1989, that ``in 
the current emotion of the moment our nations seem to be forgetting an 
important point: A modernized, unified, and effectively governed China 
that has good relations with us is by far the preferred solution for 
advancing American security interests in East Asia.'' It was true in 
1989; it is true in 1995. Let us move forward and recognize that 60 
percent of all world trade is occurring in the Pacific rim.
  Mr. SOLOMON. Mr. Speaker, as I yield to the next speaker, let me 
thank the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Hall]. He has taken over on his side 
of the aisle as the manager of this rule. He is truly one of the 
outstanding Members of this body, who has stood up for the oppressed 
people around this entire world. And we admire him and respect him as 
well.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield 3\3/4\ minutes to the gentleman from Virginia 
[Mr. Wolf], the gentleman who has led the fight for human rights all 
over this world.
  Mr. WOLF. Mr. Speaker, I want to personally thank the gentleman from 
New York [Mr. Solomon] for his faithfulness over the years; also the 
gentlewoman from California [Ms. Pelosi] for her faithfulness on this. 
She was like Margaret Thatcher on this, and I also want to thank the 
gentleman from Nebraska [Mr. Bereuter] for his willingness to kind of 
work this out, and I want to thank the Speaker personally because his 
involvement made a difference.
  So much I want to say. I tell the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. 
Manzullo] that, if we had traded with Hitler, I do not think it would 
have made any difference, and I went to the Holocaust Museum and saw 
the documents where they said it would just have more business with 
Hitler, he will change, and he did not change.
  There is a lot bad going on in China. This is a good resolution, it 
is a good bill, and I support it, but keep in mind, I will tell the 
gentleman when he talks about business, there are Catholic priests in 
jail that we now have in jail in China. How much business is it worth 
for our Catholic priest to be in jail? There are Protestants who have 
been arrested in church. How much money in trade and factories is it 
worth for that American? Harry Wu, an American prisoner, is in jail. 
They have more gulags and slave labor camps.
  The gentleman met with a Chinese counselor. How about going into 
slave labor camps? That is the problem. When our people go to China and 
meet, they have dinner with Li Peng. They do not go into the house 
churches and into the slave labor camps.

[[Page H7273]]

  Do not forget they are trading nuclear weapons with Iran and Iraq. Do 
not forget the missile violations, the chemical war violations. Do not 
forget they are plundering Tibet. Do not forget they have arrested the 
men and women connected with the Dalai Lama. There are a lot of bad 
things that China has done, and we should recognize this.
  Although this resolution is good, because it finally gets the 
Congress in a bipartisan way to come together, my last comment is this:
  People talk about MFN. We would not have granted MFN to the Soviet 
Union. When Shcharansky was in Prime Camp 35, we would not have granted 
MFN to the Soviet Union, and both sides know it. When Sakharov was 
under house arrest in Gorky, we all stood together, Republicans, 
Democrats, Liberals, and Conservatives, because there was pressure to 
do it, and God bless Ronald Reagan, and where is he when we need him 
now? He stood firm and called them the Evil Empire. We would not have 
granted MFN to Czechoslovakia when Havel was under arrest. No way we 
would have done it. A Member would have been embarrassed to come down 
to the floor and say, ``Havel is in jail, let's give him MFN.''
  And I thank the gentleman from Georgia [Mr. Lewis], who is not here. 
We would not have lifted sanctions and done anything for South Africa 
when Nelson Mandela was in.
  So this is a good resolution. It puts the Congress on record. But let 
us not drip with sour grapes and say China is going to build all these 
airports, and they are going to do all these wonderful things.
  How about what the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Traficant] and the 
gentlewoman from Ohio [Ms. Kaptur] will tell us? We have lost millions 
of jobs, millions of jobs.
  This is a trade issue. Their imbalance is almost $40 billion, a trade 
imbalance. We have lost a million jobs. It is a slave labor issue. It 
is a persecution of religious faith, Catholic, Protestant, Buddhist. It 
is all these other issues. They sold weapons to Iraq that were used 
against American men and women to kill people in the gulf.
  Having said that though, I just did not want the reports to go off 
that everything was wonderful. Having said that, the Bereuter 
resolution is a good resolution, and it is my prayer that we could come 
together and solve this problem. Every night I pray that China, in my 
prayers that China, will be free, and hopefully with the work that the 
gentleman from Nebraska [Mr. Bereuter] has done and coming together, we 
put pressure on, there will be freedom, and 10 years from now there 
will be freedom in Tiananmen Square, freedom in China, and democracy, 
and I want to again thank the gentleman from Nebraska [Mr. Bereuter]. I 
will be eternally grateful to the Speaker for his help, the gentleman 
from New York [Mr. Solomon] for his faithfulness, and the gentlewoman 
from California [Ms. Pelosi] for her doggedness in staying with this 
issue.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Emerson). The gentleman from New York 
[Mr. Solomon] is recognized for 15 seconds.
  Mr. SOLOMON. Mr. Speaker, let me just say this rule was negotiated 
with the minority, the Democratic and Republican leadership. It is a 
good rule, it is a fair rule, and I hope Members come over here and 
vote for it. As a matter of fact, I hope there is not even a recorded 
vote on it.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time, and I move the 
previous question on the resolution.
  The previous question was ordered.
  The resolution was agreed to.
  A motion to reconsider was laid on the table.

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