[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 7 (Monday, January 22, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Pages S283-S284]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    CHINA'S CHALLENGE TO WASHINGTON

 Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, the New York Times had an excellent 
editorial titled ``China's Challenge to Washington.''
  There is a reluctance to be forceful with China on the issue of human 
rights.
  When I say ``forceful,'' I do not mean the use of force, but the 
willingness to stand forthright for what this country should stand for.
  We turn a cold shoulder to our friends in Taiwan, where they have a 
multiparty system, and seem to quake every time China is unhappy with 
something someone says or does.
  As the editorial suggests, we should ``respond far more sharply to 
Wei Jingsheng's sentence.''
  I am pleased to back this administration when they are right, as in 
Bosnia, but I also believe that we should be much stronger in setting 
forth our beliefs as far as the abuses in China. I ask that the 
editorial from the New York Times be printed in the Record after my 
remarks.
  Along the same line, Stefan Halper, host of NETE television's 
``Worldwise'' and a former White House and State Department official, 
recently had an op-ed piece in the Washington Times titled ``Taiwan's 
Unheralded Political Evolution,'' which I ask to be printed in the 
Record following my remarks and after the New York Times editorial.
  The reality is democracy has grown and is thriving in Taiwan, and we 
should recognize that in our policies.
  The material follows:

                    China's Challenge to Washington

       If the United States intends to develop a relationship of 
     mutual respect with China, it must defend its interests as 
     vigorously as Beijing does. Now is the time, for China has 
     shown a dangerous new bellicosity in matters from human 
     rights to military threats.
       Last week Beijing again showed its contempt for the rights 
     of Chinese citizens by convicting Wei Jingsheng of sedition 
     and sentencing him to 14 years in prison. The activities the 
     court cited included organizing art exhibitions to benefit 
     democracy and writing articles that advocated Tibet's 
     independence. This heavy-handed muzzling of the country's 
     leading dissenter is a measure of the Chinese belief that 
     America and other Western countries will not make them pay a 
     diplomatic or economic price for the abuse of human rights.
       Chinese behavior has been equally provocative in other 
     fields. In recent months Beijing has bullied the Philippines 
     over contested islands in the South China Sea, twice 
     conducted missile tests in the waters off Taiwan, resumed 
     irresponsible weapons transfers and imposed its own choice as 
     the reincarnated Panchen Lama, the second most important 
     religious figure in Tibet. Meanwhile, as The Times's Patrick 
     Tyler reports, influential military commanders have begun 
     pushing for military action against Taiwan and turned to 
     confrontational rhetoric against the United States.
       Washington has minimized these provocations, setting them 
     in the larger perspective of China's encouraging economic 
     reforms and Washington's hopes for political liberalization. 
     That was the same logic that led the Administration, early 
     last year, to abandon its efforts to link trade privileges 
     for China to Beijing's record on human rights, arguing that 
     anything that helped China's booming economy would ultimately 
     advance political freedom as well.
       It is working out that way. The 19 months since that policy 
     change have been marked by a serious deterioration in China's 
     responsiveness on human rights and other issues. 
     Discouragingly, this seems to be happening not simply because 
     a new generation of leaders is maneuvering to succeed the 
     failing Deng Xiaoping. Nationalist military officers are 
     steadily gaining political influence, and the two top 
     civilian leaders, President Jiang Zimen and Prime Minister Li 
     Peng, seem committed advocates of political repression. That 
     suggests the newly belligerent policies may not be just a 
     transitional phase, or a sign or insecurity in the leadership 
     group, as some China scholars in the West have said.
       The Clinton Administration, having done all it reasonably 
     could to smooth relations, including an October meeting 
     between Presidents Clinton and Jiang, now needs to recognize 
     that a less indulgent policy is required to encourage more 
     responsible behavior by China. The first step is to respond 
     far more sharply to Wei Jingsheng's sentence, beginning with 
     a concerted diplomatic drive to condemn China before the 
     United Nations Human Rights Commission next March. U.N. 
     condemnation would be an international embarrassment for 
     China, one it desperately wants to avoid.
       Another step is to oppose non-humanitarian World Bank loans 
     to China, as already provided for under United States law. 
     Some Administration officials also want to consider human 
     rights issues in judging China's application to join the new 
     World Trade Organization, even though that is likely to bring 
     objections from other W.T.O. members.
       The Administration still refuses to reconsider the simpler, 
     more obvious step of restoring a link between trade and human 
     rights. In this critically important diplomatic game, the 
     United States may no longer be able to deny itself the 
     leverage that link could bring.

               [From the Washington Times, Dec. 13, 1995]

                Taiwan's Unheralded Political Evolution

                           (By Stefan Halper)

       In an era that believes America's future lies in Asia, what 
     is the Asian democratic model? Singapore and Malaysia are 
     single party states refreshed a bit by economic freedom. Hong 
     Kong, still a colony, has lately been given a measure of 
     self-government--which Americans of 1770 would have scorned--
     only to be swallowed whole by the not-so-democratic People's 
     Republic of China in little more than 18 months. South Korea? 
     It's dominated by a government party whose last president is 
     now up on charges of stealing $600 million--give or take a 
     couple of hundred million.
       Japan, for 38 years, has been run by a corrupt single party 
     (the LDP) only to cede power to a collection of reformers who 
     themselves squandered the chance for real change. Today the 
     LDP is back in a cynical misalliance with its nemesis, the 
     socialists, whom it hopes to shortly expel.
       When does that leave us? With the Burmese, or the 
     Indonesian generals, or perhaps Thailand, where politicians 
     are so corrupt they stay out of jail?
       Reading the Mainland press, Taiwan's recent peaceful, 
     multiparty elections never happened. No mention--the dog that 
     didn't bark. A decade ago, the phrase ``Taiwanese democracy'' 
     would have been rightly dismissed as an oxymoron, though 
     compared to Mao's mainland, the island republic was widely 
     seen as an economic miracle.
       Ironically, it is this economic strength today--$100 
     billion in hard currency reserves and America's ninth-largest 
     trading partner--that has obscured Taiwan's political 
     evolution. The late Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek's 
     Kuomingtang single-party rule, was replaced by his son and 
     successor Chiang Ching-kuo, who created a supportive 
     environment for democratic pluralism before he died in 1988. 
     Martial law was lifted, opposition parties were legalized, 
     press restrictions were eliminated and it was agreed that 
     Chiang's successor would not be a member of the family or 
     even a transplanted mainlander. Instead President Lee Teng-
     hui is a native Taiwanese so far determined to further reform 
     by supporting younger, Taiwan-born politicians as leaders of 
     the KMT.
                                                                    ____

       In the last eight years, three legislative elections have 
     been held, each time with slowly shrinking KMT majorities. 
     The old National Assembly dominated by KMT geriatrics has 
     been mercifully stripped of its powers. Direct presidential 
     elections will be held for the first time in Chinese history 
     next March.
       Literally nowhere in Asia, except Taiwan, has a ruling 
     party allowed itself to be eclipsed. Nowhere has the attack 
     on political corruption been so singleminded as it is in 
     Taiwan. Vote fraud, unlike Thailand and Korea, has been 
     almost eliminated. Vote buying in the recent Dec. 2 poll has 
     been reduced to rural areas and to a level that would boggle 
     the minds of most Japanese and Thai voters.
       At present, the KMT holds a six-seat majority in the 
     legislature. Sessions will continue to be raucous, often 
     undignified--not unlike the 19th century U.S. Congress or for 
     that matter Congress today, recall the Moran-Hunter fight a 
     few weeks ago--but so what? The opposition has strengthened 
     as the exhausted Nationalists confront the reality of an 
     increasingly pluralist Taiwan.
       Though Democratic politics is often a matter of shades of 
     ugly, the alternatives in Asia--both left and right--are 
     vastly less attractive. Why the, despite Taiwan's effort, has 
     it's progress been ignored? Are American interests served by 
     recognizing and nurturing democratic growth--or has some 
     blend of security and mercantile priorities cast our lot with 
     the Mainland? The Clinton administration, still struggling 
     with this Wilson-Rossevelt policy cleavage, has said nothing 
     on the subject, even while embarrassing itself before and 
     after Lee Teng-hui's summer address at Cornell, his alma 
     mater.
       Yet in the hall of mirrors that passes for Taiwan's 
     politics, the Nationalist Party-KMT reflects its belief in 
     ``One China'' while the opposition New Party, with 13.5 
     percent of the vote, is even more forceful on the subject. 
     And as for the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), it is 
     split on the issue with the majority having muted the call 
     for independence. Maybe the mean Chinese uncle in 

[[Page S284]]
     Beijing, implacably opposed to the island-nation's existence, succeeded 
     with this muscular diplomacy--missile tests, mock landings 
     and war games. After all, the stock market dipped and 
     successionist politicians had limited resonance during the 
     election.
       So why are the mandarins in Beijing worried? Perhaps it is 
     because on the heels of Hong Kong's democratic election that 
     saw the defeat of pro-Mainland candidates, Taiwan has emerged 
     as the Asian democratic model; and the first successful, 
     full-blown democracy in five millennia of Chinese history, 
     underscores the difficulty of reunion with China. Or perhaps 
     the mandarins in the Forbidden City realize that their 
     options have narrowed; that the use of force against Taiwan 
     would be a disaster for U.S.-China relations and U.S. 
     credibility and, most of all, would tear the web of Asian 
     security and economic relationships that have sustained 
     China's and the region's growth. We shall see.

                          ____________________