[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 38 (Tuesday, March 19, 1996)]
[House]
[Page H2327]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




 UNITED STATES MUST BE CLEAR ABOUT ITS POSITION REGARDING DEMOCRACY IN 
                                 TAIWAN

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of May 
12, 1995, the gentleman from California [Mr. Cox] is recognized during 
morning business for 5 minutes.
  Mr. COX of California. Mr. Speaker, I would like to respond to the 
preceding speaker's remarks concerning the events now taking place in 
the Taiwan Strait. It is very, very important that this Congress is 
treating this issue today on the floor. It is very, very important that 
the United States of America make clear to the People's Republic of 
China that a war of aggression waged against the democracy on Taiwan 
will not be accepted, not by the United States, not by the free world, 
and that is the world that Taiwan is joining, because right now, in the 
days ahead, Taiwan is preparing for the first ever free, fair, open, 
and democratic elections of a head of government in nearly 5,000 years 
of Chinese history.
  This is an extraordinary achievement which all of us applaud, and we 
should. Communism, which continues to reign in the People's Republic of 
China, is the antithesis of democracy. Wei Jingsheng, who was recently 
sentenced again to prison for his role as a democracy activist in the 
People's Republic, is recent testimony to how stark that difference is.
  The People's Republic of China is free to maintain its Communist 
dictatorship. It is free to abuse human rights. It is free to in every 
respect, economic and political, differ from the free people on Taiwan 
and do all of this without military threat from the United States or 
anyone. In fact, we openly trade with the People's Republic of China.
  But what they are not free to do, what they have no right to do, in 
nature or in law, is to mount an unprovoked military assault against 
the island democracy on Taiwan.
  Right now, the People's Republic of China is threatening freedom in 
the world because they are threatening this military invasion. The 
United States policy has been and shall remain that we will trust any 
outcome peaceably achieved through diplomatic negotiations and ongoing 
discussions and all other peaceful meetings between the Government on 
Taiwan and the Government in Beijing, the Communist Government of the 
People's Republic of China.
  Unilateral imposition of a solution, least of all by military force, 
is not acceptable. in the Shanghai Communique, which the preceding 
speaker referred to, in 1982, the People's Republic of China agreed 
that they would seek a peaceful resolution of any disagreements they 
have with Taiwan. That is what everyone in the world should support.
  Naked military aggression targeted against a democracy is something 
that everyone here should understand threatens each of us. What we want 
in that region is peace. What we do not want is inadvertent war.
  Right now the Communist leaders in Beijing are pushing and pushing 
and pushing as hard as they can, competing in fact with one another, to 
see which of them is going to succeed to the head of that dictatorship, 
and they are trying to show who is the most muscular, who is the most 
Communist, who is the most opposed to democracy.
  As they push and push and push, they must understand that there is a 
line beyond which they must not go, and that is launching a military 
assault against Taiwan. If the United States is ambiguous on this 
point, we risk war through weakness. We will not have war. We will have 
peace if we are quite clear in this aspect of our foreign policy. But 
there is nothing to be gained and everything to be lost from saying we 
are not sure what would happen if the People's Republic of China were 
to launch a military invasion of Taiwan, because the truth is we do 
know the answer to that, and we ought to tell Beijing first before it 
happens. The People's Republic of China is our sixth-largest trading 
partner. Taiwan is America's seventh-largest trading partner. Because 
the PRC runs a huge trade deficit with America, it is true that Taiwan 
actually buys more from the United States than does the Communist 
government in China. Because they are respectively our sixth- and 
seventh-largest trading partners, we have nothing to gain from a war in 
the Taiwan Strait.

  We in America must be the peacemakers, and there is only one way for 
the world's only superpower to maintain peace here, and that is to be 
clear. We have no diplomacy that can help us once there is a war that 
is started on a mistaken premise that the United States will not 
respond. But we do have a means--because of our relationship with both 
Taiwan and the People's Republic of China--have a means to keep the 
peace, and that is to let them know that America stands by its 
friendship with the peaceful government on Taiwan. Taiwan is not a 
threat to the PRC. The PRC, the People's Republic of China, must not be 
a threat to the free government on Taiwan.

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