[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 74 (Thursday, May 23, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H5560-H5563]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                                 BURMA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Goss). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of May 12, 1995, the gentleman from California [Mr. Rohrabacher] 
is recognized for 30 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from California 
[Mr. Dornan] for granting me this time from his 1-hour special order.
  There are several issues that I would like to speak about today. 
Perhaps there is one issue that I should begin with, because no one 
else seems to be speaking out, although I know that it is close to the 
hearts of both Republicans and Democrats here in the House of 
Representatives.
  When we have our disagreements here in the House, one thing that we 
learn is that although we disagree, we do have some fundamental 
agreements that keep us together as Americans and that bind us to all 
of the American people. That is, we do believe in democracy. We do 
believe in freedom of speech. We do believe in these fundamentals that 
were fought for by George Washington, whose picture is on our wall here 
in the Chamber of the House.
  We believe that we have a commitment to the world, a commitment to 
the world to stand for freedom because our forefathers were aided by 
people whose picture is also here on the wall in our Chamber, 
Lafayette, who came here to help us struggle for our freedom and 
independence over 200 years ago.
  Basically he did so because he wanted to express a solidarity with 
the people of the United States, knowing that we would be the champions 
of freedom. By our very nature, our country is composed of people who 
come here from all corners of the world, all parts of the world, every 
race, every religion, every ethnic group is represented here, and we 
live together in freedom and democracy. By that very nature, we owe the 
world something. That is the stay true to those principles of freedom 
and democracy that our forefathers proclaimed, not just the rights of 
Americans but the rights of all people.
  In the last 48 hours, there has been a vicious attack on the cause of 
democracy in the country of Burma. Burma is a country you do not hear 
much about. Most Americans in fact probably think that Burma, the only 
thing they relate to is BurmaShave, they think of BurmaShave. It must 
be some sort of shaving cream or something.
  In fact, Burma is a country with 48 million people in Southeast Asia. 
A country that now is suffering under the heel of one of the world's 
most vicious dictatorships. And over these last few years, many of us 
who have been active in the human rights movement have tried to work 
and do our best to see that perhaps Burma could evolve out of this 
dictatorship. The military dictatorship in Burma is called SLORC. It is 
a name that basically fits the regime because it sounds like it is 
right out of ``Star Wars,'' out of the monstrous regimes that the 
freedom fighters in the film series ``Star Wars,'' where the freedom 
fighters are fighting against the evil empire.
  This evil empire in Burma is repressing the people. But there is, you 
might say, a champion of freedom, a hero to the world who lives in 
Burma and has tried to bring democracy to that country. It is Aung San 
Suu Kyi. Aung San Suu Kyi was of course of Nobel prize winner 2 years 
ago. She has suffered 5 years of confinement. She was arrested by the 
SLORC regime. Then last year she was set free and many of us hoped that 
there would be lessening of the repression in Burma. But what has 
happened in the last 48 hours is that the military dictatorship in 
Burma, SLORC, has rounded up almost 200 members of the democratic 
opposition in Burma and arrested them.
  Anyone who is meeting with Aung San Suu Kyi, anyone who is involved 
in the democratic movement is being arrested. Dr. Sein Win, the Prime 
Minister of the democratic government in exile, testified in the Senate 
yesterday that the situation in Burma is one of despair and despotism. 
Today his brother, who is not even a member of the democratic movement, 
was arrested in retaliation for what Prime Minister Sein Win testified 
about here in Washington.

                              {time}  1700

  So I have introduced a piece of legislation hopefully that will 
discourage Americans from doing business in Burma. It is H.R. 2892, and 
we would hope that the American people and American businessmen 
recognize that here is a country that if anywhere we should take a 
stand for freedom. If anywhere in the world we could take a stand and 
it will not hurt us and we just show that we believe in freedom, it 
could be Burma. And there is no excuse for us not to do so. There is no 
strategic interest there, there is no huge commercial interest, but 
what is there are 48 million people suffering under the heal of 
despotism, crying out to the United States for us to take a stand.
  Take your stand, America. What side are you on?
  When that cry goes out from people who are being oppressed, never 
should we say we are on the side of the dictators, we are on the side 
of the oppressors.
  This country, this dictatorship in Burma, has financed its war on its 
own people by selling off its teak forests, which have been decimated, 
by basically selling its natural resources, its

[[Page H5561]]

gems, to foreigners who have come in and extracted it, and they put the 
money, the SLORC has put the money into their own pockets and into 
their own coffers, and now it is even willing to sell its natural gas 
resources to American companies. And where do these moneys go? They go 
into the purchase of weapon systems of military equipment and 
militarization of this country that is used to repress their own 
people.
  Furthermore, this monstrous regime that represses its own people in 
Burma has taken its resources also by becoming involved in the drug 
trade. Many people in our country wanted us to actually cooperate with 
the Government of Burma, with its dictatorship, thinking that we could 
together stand against drugs.
  Others of us believed, as I think has been reconfirmed, that the 
dictatorship in Burma is up to their necks in the drug trade. They have 
not refrained from becoming involved in growing opium and selling 
heroin because of some kind of morality. If they had any morality, they 
would not be murdering their own people, and that was brought home more 
recently when the drug lord Kung Saw, who was famous in the United 
States, or I should say infamous in the United States, he was put out 
of business by the Burmese military dictatorship, and what has 
happened? Kung Saw, he may have gone into retirement; of course he is 
not in jail, he is in retirement in Rangoon; but the drug trade and the 
drug production from his area, which is now under government control, 
continues at the level that it was.
  Aung San Suu Kyi, this heroine of freedom, this women who in our time 
shows an example to the world of what we should be like as Americans, 
champions of freedom, has asked us to put economic sanctions on this 
regime because it now has shown its true colors. It does not, the 
Burmese regime, the SLORC regime, does not want reform. It instead is 
seeking further repression and will grasp on to power until the last 
desperate time, what they have, is gone, until they are forced from 
power by pressure from the outside or by perhaps revolution from their 
own people. Unfortunately the SLORC regime is being bolstered by a 
military that is being supplied by Communist China. Communist China has 
sold Burma the weapons it needs to maintain a dictatorship.
  In fact, Burma, is becoming a client state of China. The Red Chinese 
regime is doing all it can to keep its buddies, its gangster buddies, 
in power in Rangoon.
  Congress will soon take up the issue, interestingly enough, of most-
favored-nation status to China. This is an important piece of 
legislation. But let us make sure that, as we move forward when we are 
talking about Burma, that we can make a stand in Burma, and I, as I 
say, I have introduced H.R. 2892, and I ask my fellow colleagues to 
join me in basically outlawing any further American investment through 
supporting H.R. 2892 and opposing any further American investment in 
Burma.
  Now, we will make another choice very soon, too, which it comes to 
most-favored-nation status with China. When it comes to this decision, 
yes, there are a lot of other factors at play. There are many. China, 
Communist China, is a strategic country. There are a billion people in 
China. China has technologies. China has a huge army that can affect 
the United States. And also economically we are already in an economic 
relationship that in some way binds us to that country.
  But just today it was disclosed that Chinese officials themselves 
have been involved with smuggling fully automatic AK-47 rifles into the 
United States. These are people that have contacts in the Chinese army. 
These are not Chinese entrepreneurs, people doing this outside of their 
own government. These are government officials themselves.
  The Red Chinese regime is a rogue regime. It is oppressing its own 
people just like in Burma and every other dictatorship, but the regime 
also sells nuclear weapons technology to developing countries and arms 
dictatorships like Burma. It has a Nazi-like policy in dealing with 
orphans, in dealing with the disabled and dealing with the unborn.
  It is conducting an economic war against the United States. I mean 
the bottom line is American companies find it difficult to sell in 
China unless the Chinese regime permits them to sell their goods there, 
yet they take full advantage of our market in the United States. So 
they limit access to their market, and they end up stealing our 
intellectual property, as is becoming known now. These people are 
involved with grand theft of our intellectual property rights, our 
CD's, our entertainment items that are worth billions of dollars to the 
economy of southern California; they are being ripped off by companies 
that are owned by the People's Liberation Army, by government officials 
in China.
  They have, in fact, a $35 billion trade surplus with us that does not 
even count the rip-offs, and with this $35 billion in surplus, they buy 
weapons in order to upgrade their military, to threaten their 
neighbors, and bully their neighbors and to become a, quote, power in 
the world. Well, we have seen what that power means. What it means when 
you have a dictatorship spending money and upgrading its military, it 
means that it threatens its neighbors even more aggressively.

  In the Philippines they know what a better armed China means. They 
have recently had a little confrontation with the Chinese over the 
Spratley Islands, and what should have been a negotiated disagreement 
became almost an armed confrontation when a belligerent, hostile and a 
threatening Red China decided it would have its way, negotiations were 
not the order of the day.
  We also saw the results of this when just a month ago the Red Chinese 
regime sent its military into the Taiwan Strait in an attempt to 
intimidate the democratic government, the Republican of China, Taiwan, 
trying to intimidate them into not having a free election. What we saw 
were missiles being fired at a democratic people, people who were 
simply trying to have an election, in order to intimidate them and 
frighten them from their democratic rights.
  Well, what more, what more I ask you, does a country have to do 
before the United States says that they will not enjoy the trading 
status of most-favored-nation status with the United States? What more 
can a regime do? Do they have to open up gas ovens and begin murdering 
people exactly like the Nazis did during World War II?
  This is a regime, a monster regime, on the mainland of China, and 
this administration, the Clinton administration, has decoupled any 
consideration of human rights to the consideration of most-favored-
nation status for that regime. It is a disgrace. Let us remember that 
President Clinton 4 years ago was attacking then sitting President Bush 
for granting most-favored-nation status to the mainland Chinese regime, 
and as soon as President Clinton became President, not only did he 
grant most-favored-nation status, but he has decoupled the 
consideration of most-favored-nation status from any discussion about 
human rights. It is the ultimate hypocrisy and has been one of the 
biggest and worst setbacks for the human rights community in the U.S. 
history, when the President, when President Clinton, not only reneged 
but did an absolutely turnabout in his belief in supporting human 
rights on mainland China.
  Well, who is it up to, then? It is up to us, the American people, to 
stand for our beliefs in freedom and democracy and to stand up, yes, 
for the interests of the United States, and what is happening with the 
most-favored-nation status debate here in Congress is that we find that 
those companies that are making a profit from their investment in 
China, a huge profit from their investment in China, have turned around 
and become lobbyists to us for this dictatorial regime. What we have 
found is not that what the theory was was that if we permit our people 
to invest in China they will become emissaries of democracy to that 
country, but they have instead become lobbyists for a dictatorship to 
the United States.
  Well, we are the ones who have to make the decision, not just based 
on what a very small group of companies are doing, making a profit by 
dealing with these terribly dictatorial regimes whose hands are 
dripping with blood.
  The fact is that when it comes to Burma, we have a right also to tell 
our people this is not the right thing to do,

[[Page H5562]]

for your to do, to invest in that dictatorship. We also have a right 
and obligation to our own people to say we will not permit Chinese 
goods that are produced in slave labor camps and produced by the army, 
buy companies that are owned by the army, and produced by a regime that 
is trying to bolster its weapon systems to threaten its neighbors, we 
will not permit that country to come into our marketplace and with the 
same status of other free and democratic countries.
  I would hope that the American people insist that their 
representatives in the United States vote against most-favored-nation 
status for China.
  There is one other issue that will be coming forth very quickly and 
that we will find in front of this body within the next 2 weeks. It is 
an issue that relates to most-favored-nation status and relates to 
these dictatorships around the world because it is changing our patent 
system in a way that will permit those thieves, those dictatorships 
around the world, to steal American technology.
  Now, most of you probably have not heard anything about the proposed 
changes in our patent law. Most Americans would not even understand the 
proposed changes in our patent law. But there is an insidious attempt 
being made to make fundamental changes in the situation of our patent 
system, in the makeup of our patent system, so that it will be easier 
for foreign corporations to steal America's greatest asset, and that is 
the genius of our people. What will be coming forth before this body is 
a bill, H.R. 3460, which I call the Steal American Technologies Act. 
This act, believe it or not, will insist that from now on, if an 
American inventor applies for a patent in this country, after 18 
months, whether or not that patent has been issued, that American 
inventor's application with all the details of the technology that he 
has developed will be published for the world to see. This is an 
invitation to the thieves of the world to steal our most precious 
asset, and that is the innovative and creative ideas of our inventors 
and our technology that we will use in the future to keep America 
competitive.
  This is absolutely the greatest threat that I see to America's future 
prosperity, yet so few people will understand what the vote is all 
about. But it does not take a genius, however, to understand that if we 
disclose the information of our inventors, even before their patents 
have been issued, that there will be a line at the Patent Office to get 
that information and to fax it immediately to the Chinese mainland, 
where they will set up manufacturing units based on those ideas and 
that technology even before our inventors are issued their own patent.
  Ironically, when H.R. 3460, the ``Steal American Technologies Act,'' 
was going through the subcommittee, and it has passed the subcommittee 
in this body and is heading for the floor, on the day that it was 
passed in the subcommittee I had a representative of an American 
company that represents many patents. It happens to be a solar energy 
company. He was there in my office, and we were discussing the patent 
law.

                              {time}  1715

  I asked him what would happen if his patent applications had been 
published before he actually was issued the patent. His face turned 
white, and his fists came together, and he said,

       Congressman, if my patent applications are published before 
     my patent is issued my foreign competitors will be actually 
     manufacturing the things that I have invented before I can 
     even go into manufacturing them. And do you know what they 
     will do if I try to sue them later? They will use the profits 
     from my own technology to fight me in court and wipe me out.

  Mr. Speaker, this is a great threat to American prosperity. Every 
American should contact their Member of Congress, their Senator, to 
defeat H.R. 3460, the steal American technologies act. But this is only 
one, just one swing at the American patent system. The American patent 
system has been under attack, but because it is so hard to understand, 
the American people cannot see what is going on.
  Another part of this very same bill would corporatize the Patent 
Office of the United States. People will say, Dana Rohrabacher is a 
conservative Republican. Does he not believe in privatization? I 
certainly do not believe we should take our court system and the court 
functions of government and privatize them. No, there are certain 
things government has to do. Those things deal with protecting our 
rights, protecting our freedom, especially defining the property rights 
we have in a free society.
  Part of this legislation would take the Patent Office and corporatize 
it and turn it into something like the Post Office. That may sound 
benign but, in effect, that would take patent examiners who today are 
making decisions, responsible decisions for what are the property 
rights dealing with new technology in our society, as to who owns those 
ideas and those new property rights that are being created, and those 
patent examiners by that process will be stripped of their civil 
service protection.
  They will be then put in jeopardy of many outside forces, and even 
inside forces that might want to influence their decision, forces that 
have been thwarted up until now because patent examiners know their job 
is to make the right decision, and they are protected from people 
making assaults on them or trying to influence them from the outside.
  Can anyone believe that stripping our patent examiners, the people 
who will define what is American technology in the future and who owns 
it, stripping them of their civil service protection, is not going to 
open the doorway to corruption, open the doorway to foreigners coming 
here trying to steal our technology, and cut off our people from the 
rights to control their own inventions? Does anyone believe that that 
will not happen?
  No one who looks at the issue believes that, but the fact is most of 
the Members of Congress will never have any way of seeing the details. 
They will be told some local company has decided that H.R. 3460, which 
I call the steal American technologies act, is a good thing because 
many American companies, what has happened, these big corporations, 
many of them who are now owned by multinational corporations and 
outside people, have big shares in those companies; but these big 
American corporations have decided that they are going to buy into 
global protection of America's intellectual property.
  What it is, basically they have decided that for a promise from other 
countries like Red China, like Japan, and like many other developing 
countries, a promise from those countries, oh, yes, we will protect our 
intellectual property rights if you will only conform your system to be 
like our system. The changes that are brought about by H.R. 3460 are 
basically aimed at what they call harmonizing our law with that of 
Japan. We will blink our eyes and in a very short time period, we will 
see the patent law in the United States totally changed so that it 
mirrors that which Japan has had over these last few decades.
  Mr. Speaker, it is very hard for people to understand what the 
significance of this is. Why is the gentleman from California, Dana 
Rohrabacher, down here on the floor talking about patent law, these 
little changes? So what if it is going to harmonize with Japan?
  Do we really want to walk around like ants, like the people of Japan? 
Do we want to be suppressed by the business interests, by the big boys 
that run roughshod over the people in Japan? How many new innovations 
and how much creativity has come out of Japan in these last 20 years? 
The people of Japan allow themselves, because they have a different 
culture, allow themselves to be dominated by big interest groups who 
control their society.
  That is not what America is all about. America is about the rights of 
the individual, the rights of the little guy, the rights of every 
person to have the same control over his destiny as those people who 
are more affluent, the rights of every person to direct the course of 
his Government. Other countries are not this way.
  But what we have here coming before this body is a stark choice: H.R. 
3460, the steal American technologies act, versus a bill that I have 
put forward and tried to get to the floor of this body for 1\1/2\ 
years, H.R. 359. H.R. 359 would protect American inventors, and it 
would restore to American inventors the guaranteed patent right that 
they have to protect their invention or their idea for a guaranteed 
patent term of 17

[[Page H5563]]

years after they have been issued a patent.
  Most Americans do not understand, and I am sad to report to those 
people who are listening tonight that the guaranteed patent term that 
Americans enjoyed for over 130 years has already been taken away from 
them, and most Americans do not even know it.
  What happened is a year and a half ago, in the GATT implementation 
legislation, an item was snuck into this legislation that had nothing 
to do with the GATT agreement. It was not required by GATT but it was 
snuck in there, so that we as a body would have to vote against the 
entire world trading system, or we would have to vote for the world 
trading system. We would have to vote against the world trading system 
in order to get at that one provision.
  Most Members, of course, were not willing to cut us off from all of 
the trade regulations of the GATT negotiations. But it was an insult to 
this body that they had put this provision in in the first place. What 
did this small provision do, this one little item that they snuck in 
there? There was an innocuous change in the patent law. It said that 
the patents now in the United States will now be measured from 20 years 
from the time the inventor files for the patent. So, 20 years later he 
will no longer have any patent rights.
  It almost sounds like, hey, we are actually expanding the amount of 
time that a patent applicant has for the protection of his patent. But 
in reality what has happened, what we used to have is that if someone 
applies for a patent and it took 5 or 10 years for his patent 
application to be processed, he or she would have 17 years guaranteed 
patent protection time in order to make that investment back, in order 
to profit from that technology. But if we started at 20 years and it is 
over, if we started when the man applied for the patent and it is over 
in 20 years, if it takes 10 or 15 years for the patent to issue, that 
patent is almost worthless by the time it is issued. The fact is that 
three-quarters of the time has already been used up. In other words, 
the clock is ticking against the individual, rather than ticking 
against the bureaucracy.
  That was a dramatic change, to let us harmonize our system with 
Japan. Mr. Speaker, it seems innocuous, but in the end, it dramatically 
affects the production of technology in our society, and it also, 
interestingly enough, affects who receives the benefits of that 
technology, because if a foreign corporation then only has to pay 5 
years' worth of royalties, rather than 17 years, where is that money 
going?
  That money that used to be going into the pockets of American 
inventors, because they had a guaranteed 17 years of patent protection, 
ends up staying right in the coffers of some big corporation in China 
or Japan or Korea, or even here in the United States. The little guy 
ends up losing dramatically. The big guys end up being able to steal 
legally. They have changed the rules of the game.
  My bill, H.R. 359, which will serve as a substitute for H.R. 3460, 
will return the patent rights that the American people lost by the GATT 
implementation legislation. So we will face a battle in the upcoming 
weeks between H.R. 3460, which is, as I say, I call it the steal 
American technologies act, versus my bill, H.R. 359.
  I believe this issue deserves to be debated, because it has an impact 
not only on the people of the United States, but elsewhere. We should 
not permit countries like Red China to steal American technology and 
legally do so because we are disclosing our very utmost secrets to them 
by passing such foolish legislation. When it comes to most-favored-
nation status, when there is a dictatorship like Red China or Burma, we 
should not treat them as any other free Nation.
  Mr. Speaker, I do believe in free trade. I believe that commerce 
between free people is to the benefit of all free people. But let us as 
a country stand not for trade with dictators, but instead, let us stand 
for free trade between free people.

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