[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:

       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 be settled by China's force would be in 
     disgrace as well as in error.

  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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