Congressional Record, Volume 142 Issue 16 (Tuesday, February 6, 1996)

[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 16 (Tuesday, February 6, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Pages S907-S908]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

CHINA AND TAIWAN

Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, China is making bellicose statements about
Taiwan. This morning's Washington Post begins an editorial with these
words:

Mr. President, the best way to avoid force or to avoid giving a
dictator and a dictatorship the appetite that will not be satisfied
with conquering one area is to make clear that that will be resisted by
the community of nations. I am not talking about the use of American
troops, but I think American air power clearly ought to be brought to
bear if such an eventuality should take place.
If China is permitted to grab Taiwan, I think it will be only a
matter of time before China takes Mongolia and other areas. I think the
best way of maintaining stability in that area of the world is to be
firm.
I heard my colleague, Senator Feinstein, refer to our policy toward
China as one of zigzagging. I think that is a correct analysis of what
we are doing. I think we ought to be firm; we ought to be positive. I
want to have good relations with China, but China should not think for
a moment that she can invade Taiwan without having serious problems.
I ask unanimous consent, Mr. President, to have printed in the Record
the Washington Post editorial and also an A.M. Rosenthal op-ed piece in
the New York Times, ``Washington Confronts China.''
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:

[From the Washington Post, Feb. 6, 1996]

If China Attacks Taiwan

If it came to that, the United States would have no choice
but to help Taiwan--a flourishing free-market democracy--
defend itself against attack by Communist China. No treaty or
law compels this response, but decency and strategic interest
demand it. An American government that allowed the issue of
Taiwan's future to be settled by China's force would be in
disgraced as well as in error.
This is what the United States should be conveying, and
China pondering, as Beijing steps up military pressure on
Taiwan. Down that road lies a possible direct confrontation
with Washington. Even starting out on that road carries heavy
risks for China. Especially dangerous is any possibility that
Beijing may be setting out under the dubious and smug
impression that the United States will back off and leave
China with no heavy costs to pay at all.
But, of course, to be faced with an actual decision on
rescuing a threatened Taiwan would itself signify a
calamitous American policy failure. There is overwhelming
national need and also adequate time to keep today's friction
from becoming tomorrow's explosion.
The ever more glaring contrast between Beijing's
totalitarianism and Taipei's American-nursed democracy, and
the end of the Cold War, have weakened the 20-year-old
international formulas supporting China's peaceful
reunification with its wayward province. A significant
opposition in Taiwan now favors independence. The government,
coming up on Taiwan's first democratic presidential election,
has had to bend, in part by seeking official American visas
for its leaders, thus provoking Beijing. The Clinton
administration has been slow to grant the visas, not wishing
to aggravate its other tensions with China. American
legislators of different stripes have come to Taiwan's side,
further provoking Beijing.
Broad, forward-looking ``dialogue'' with China has been out
of style in Washington since George Bush imprudently sent
secret emissaries to Beijing after the Tiananmen massacre.
Fighting fires has been in. This is a fire. The United States
needs to encourage calming gestures by Taiwan (suspend the
visa provocations) and China (suspend the thuggish threats).
At home, it needs to reach a policy consensus with Congress
in order to better show China that it cannot squeeze Taipei
and to convey to Taiwan that it should not set about
deliberately and recklessly on a policy of trying to draw the
United States into an escalating showdown with Beijing. Then
the two sides can return to the irregular but peaceful
relationship they were pursuing before.

[From the New York Times]

Washington Confronts China

(By A.M. Rosenthal)

Washington has chosen the issue on which it will at last
acknowledge and confront Chinese Communist action detrimental
to the United States.
There was a considerable list to choose from. China
threatens daily missile attacks against Taiwan. Beijing sells
missiles to Iran and other Mideast dictatorships. At home it
increases arrests and jail sentences for dissidents. It
allows Internet use to only a relative handful, and from now
on only through government-controlled ports.
Each act involves the U.S. An attack on Taiwan would force
U.S. involvement. Sales of missiles endanger Mideast peace
and defy U.S. policy against proliferation of high-tech
weapons.
Increasing repression and closing access to international
information is a slap at the U.S. Washington had assured the
world of the opposite--that freedoms would increase in China
after the 1994 Clinton Administration decision not to use
economic pressure to ease oppression.
Well, enough is enough. Washington now says it will show
its staunch determination to resist Chinese provocation--
about compact disks. If China does not stop counterfeiting
these disks, the Administration will increase tariffs on
Chinese goods by as much as $1 billion.
Any commercial piracy costs manufacturers and artists money
and should be opposed. But to appreciate the CD episode fully
it helps to have a taste for bitter comedy.
1. The Communists will not keep any new promise better than
they keep existing ones--or others, like ending slave-labor
exports to the U.S.
2. If they do camouflage piracy better, they will demand
concessions--like even tighter zipping of the U.S. mouth on
human rights.
3. The U.S. announcement accentuates the moral disaster of
Clintonian policy on China.

[[Page S908]]
CD's yes, people no. Mr. Clinton broke his promise to use tariff
pressure to persuade Beijing to treat its Chinese and Tibetan
political victims less viciously--maybe a mite less torture.
Beijing answers by increasing, not decreasing, political
oppression. He acts surprised.
Democrats and Republican politicians talk about the danger
of cynicism. But they expect Americans not to see the
cynicism of putting CD's above the blood of dissidents in
China's gulags.
Worse, they may be right. I do not hear American university
students or professors mobilizing against Chinese Communist
cruelties, or consumers organizing a boycott like the one
that helped kill South African apartheid.
If war comes to Taiwan, it will not be because Beijing
believes its lie that Taiwan is preparing to declare its
deserved independence. It will be because 100 miles off
China's shore, Chinese people have created a society that is
both prosperous and democratic. That so terrifies the
perpetually insecure Politburo that it risks war--not only
against Taiwanese independence of government but Taiwanese
independence of mind.
Beijing uses missile threats to intimidate Taiwanese into
voting for a party that is running on a pro-China platform
and against independent-minded opponents.
The Taiwan Relations Act, passed by Congress in 1979, says
that U.S. recognition of Communist China rests on the
expectation that Taiwan's future will be determined by
peaceful means.
The law states that any effort to determine Taiwan's future
by other than peaceful means--which includes threats of daily
missile attacks--are of grave concern to the U.S. and should
be ``promptly'' reported by the President to Congress.
The President has not done that, promptly or at all. Nor
has Congress demanded it, despite some members' attempts. Mr.
Gingrich and Mr. Dole, the agenda-setters, become accomplices
in the President's decision to ignore U.S. law.
Restraint is needed, we are told by U.S. officials and some
journalists--we do not want a war over Taiwan, do we? Of
course not. That is what facing the possibility is all about.
As long as Congress and President ignore their legal
obligation to deal with China's threat to Taiwan, decide what
steps to take and let China know, Beijing will believe it can
attack Taiwan or keep terrorizing it, with no risk.
That is not restraint of confrontation that could lead to
war. It is the blundering encouragement of both. How terribly
many times must we learn?

Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, I see the majority leader is on the floor,
and I yield the floor to him.

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