[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 43 (Monday, April 14, 1997)]
[House]
[Pages H1452-H1455]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




   IT IS IN AMERICA'S INTEREST TO REVOKE CHINA'S MOST-FAVORED-NATION 
                                 STATUS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Pease). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 7, 1997, the gentleman from Virginia Mr. Wolf) is 
recognized for 60 minutes.
  Mr. WOLF. Mr. Speaker, I am submitting for the Record the op ed piece 
by Gary Bauer, president of the Family Research Council, which appeared 
in Sunday's Washington Post, April 13, 1997.
  Mr. Bauer, along with a powerful coalition of religious leaders, 
advocates revoking China's most-favored-nation status, MFN, because of 
China's worsening human rights record, its continued proliferation of 
dangerous weapons and technology, its unprecedented military buildup, 
and its ballooning trade surplus with the United States.

                              {time}  1545

  Mr. Bauer writes, and I quote, ``Morality and realism, too often 
considered the poles of this debate, both now clearly dictate the same 
course. Unless it changes its ways, China should be disfavored nation 
in every aspect of foreign policy.''
  For Mr. Bauer and the coalition of conservative pro-family 
organizations and Christian leaders representing some 25 million 
Americans, the most compelling though not the only reason to revoke 
China's MFN status is repression of China's religious community. The 
government views as subversive the estimated 100 million Buddhists, the 
17 million Moslems, the 8 million Catholics, and the 30 million 
Protestants worshiping outside the state-controlled so-called patriotic 
church system.
  The Chinese Government's attacks on the people of faith have 
intensified since President Clinton delinked trade from human rights in 
1994. Last year according to Nina Shea of Freedom House's Puebla 
Program, Chinese Christians reported that they were experiencing the 
worst persecution since the pre-Deng era of the 1970's. Shea estimates 
that China holds more religious prisoners than any other country in the 
world. Freedom House maintains a list of 200 persons imprisoned for 
their religious beliefs but estimates the actual numbers are thought to 
be in the thousands.
  Since 1994, Chinese authorities have increased efforts to crack down 
on all unregistered churches and believers. In January 1994, Premier Li 
Peng, who was the man who called out the Chinese troops in Tiananmen 
Square that massacred all those young people, Li Peng promulgated two 
sets of regulations for registering religious activities. Security 
forces harass, arrest, beat, and imprison church leaders, impose stiff 
fines, demolish religious buildings or meeting places, and confiscate 
Bibles. Chinese authorities have called Protestants ``enemy forces'' 
and warned that Christianity has become the major threat to the 
Communist Party.
  My office recently obtained a copy of a document released by the 
Communist Party at Donglai Province on November 20, 1996, outlining 
procedures for eradicating the underground Catholic church. It calls 
for ``reeducation,'' ideological struggle sessions, and criminal 
prosecution of Catholics who are not involved in official churches.
  Mr. Speaker, over 100 house church leaders have been arrested and 
jailed in the first 3 months of 1997, the first 3 months of 1997. And 
still the Clinton administration wants to grant this regime most-
favored-nation trading status. This has been according to Compass 
Direct, including leaders of the three largest house church networks in 
Henan Province. Just before the Easter visit to China of Vice President 
Al Gore and a bipartisan congressional delegation led by Speaker Newt 
Gingrich, authorities raided the Shanghai residence of Catholic Bishop 
Fan Zhongliang and confiscated his Bibles and other religious 
materials.
  Last year, three evangelicals and one Catholic priest were killed in 
three separate incidents after receiving severe beatings by the police. 
Hundreds of Protestant house churches in Shanghai and other provinces 
have been forcibly closed or demolished, and the popular Catholic 
shrine at Donglu has been smashed. A number of unregistered Catholic 
churches in Hebei and Jiangxi have been desecrated, destroyed, or shut 
down.
  And yet they want to give MFN to a country that does this, whose goal 
is to eradicate the house church, has Catholic bishops and priests in 
jail, is going after the evangelical Protestant church, have plundered 
Tibet and expelled the Dalai Lama from Tibet, and are persecuting 
Moslems in the northwest part of the country. And they want to grant 
MFN to them.
  Mr. Speaker, would these people have wanted to give MFN to the Soviet 
Union when they were persecuting those of the Jewish faith and shutting 
down dissidents and doing all the bad things that they were doing? No, 
no one wanted to give it to them then in the 1980's because of the 
terrible things they were doing. We used MFN to get dissidents out of 
jail. Yet they want to give MFN to China when they are doing all these 
terrible things in the 1990's, in the year 1997.

[[Page H1453]]

  In Tibet, the Chinese Government continues to plunder the Tibetan 
Buddhist culture and religion. The arrest, imprisonment, and torture of 
Tibetan monks and nuns continue unabated. The Chinese Government 
widened its ban on the photos of the Dalai Lama and contravened the 
spiritual process for selecting the Dalai Lama's successor, the Panchen 
Lama. The 6-year-old identified by the Dalai Lama as his successor 
disappeared in July 1995 and has not been heard of since. He has 
disappeared because of the activity of the Chinese Government in Tibet. 
And yet some people say they continue to want to give China most-
favored-nation trading status. Only in Washington would that ever be 
said.
  The Chinese Government has also continued its assault on political 
dissidents. In the words of the State Department's annual human rights 
report, it says, and I quote, ``All public dissent against the party 
was effectively silenced by intimidation, exile, the imposition of 
prison terms, administrative detention or house arrest,'' end quote.
  There are no dissidents left outside of prison in China because they 
are all in prison in China or have been expelled from the country.
  Beijing's dictators have stepped up its religious persecution and its 
punishment of those who advocate democracy. That is a compelling moral 
reason to revoke MFN, even for those, like myself, who favor free 
trade.
  I quote, ``Turning a blind eye to the torture of fellow believers, 
winking at forced abortions, and ignoring slave labor camps and summary 
executions are too high a markup for people who are both economic and 
social conservatives,'' Bauer argues.
  He continues, and I quote, ``all Americans have a historic attachment 
to the idea of human rights. Jewish leaders, because of the activities 
on behalf of Soviet Jews in the 1970's and 1980's, have effectively 
reminded Christians of their responsibility to help their brethren in 
China. We should have learned through bitter experience that aggressive 
and despotic regimes that abuse their own people seldom stop there. 
Soon they rise up to undermine our allies and, ultimately, to threaten 
us,'' end of quote.
  Standing up to dictators is in our long-term national interests. The 
opposing view is that constructive engagement will bring long-term 
change we desire in China. But there is not evidence to suggest this 
approach is working. This engagement policy of MFN every year has been 
in effect for several years now, and we have seen no improvement, only 
worsening conditions. And for those who say maybe there is some 
improvement, talk to the priests and the ministers that are in jail, 
talk to the bishops that are in jail and ask them if their life has 
improved.
  Mr. Speaker, there is not evidence to suggest this approach is 
working. To this Mr. Bauer says, and I quote, ``Under the theories of 
constructive engagement, the past few years of America's demoralized 
Chinese policy should have produced at least some progress. In fact the 
regime in Beijing had every incentive to extend some olive branch to 
human rights issues. That it has chosen the opposite course should 
strike the advocates of cooperation as galling. But they are not easily 
galled,'' end of quote.

  The business community continues to convince the Clinton 
administration to hold the Sino-American relationship hostage to 
American business interests. The Clinton administration hopes that 
China will become a modern civilized nation only when it is offered 
full membership in the community of nations.
  ``Today,'' and this is a quote, ``Beijing continues to maintain a 
giant gulag of extra-judicial forced-labor camps called laogai. The 
cadres continue to impose a ruthless population-control program of 
forced sterilization and abortion. The systemic practices rival the 
worst abuses that occurred during seven decades of communist rule in 
the Soviet Union,'' Bauer argues. ``U.S. human rights policy was never 
delinked from Moscow's behavior toward its own citizens.''
  It was never delinked in the Carter administration. It was never 
delinked in the Reagan administration. And we had a bipartisan foreign 
policy of Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives, that 
linked human rights and trade and MFN.
  The Soviet Union was never a most favored trading partner in the 
United States. In the 1980's, we would have never given MFN to the 
Soviet Union. No member of Congress would have ever come down to the 
well of the House and spoken out in granting MFN to the Soviet Union 
because of what they were doing, and now the Clinton administration is 
asking that they extend MFN. Some are even asking for a permanent 
extension of MFN.
  In the 1980's, Ronald Reagan called the Soviet Union the evil empire. 
His words resonated around the world and into the Soviet gulags where 
victims of repression were energized by the belief that the United 
States cared for them and was speaking out for them. I had the 
opportunity with the gentleman from New Jersey [Mr. Smith] to go to 
Perm Camp 35, the gulag before communism fell where Shcharansky was 
imprisoned. We interviewed Shcharansky's cell mate in the gulag. 
Strangely enough, in the gulag, in the Ural Mountains far away from 
civilization, the prisoners in the gulag knew that Ronald Reagan and 
the Reagan administration was standing up for human rights. How? I do 
not know. But somehow they knew, because he had stood boldly in a 
bipartisan way on these issues of human rights. And now today China has 
repressed those in the Chinese gulags, and as many people know there 
are more gulags in China than there were in the Soviet Union.
  Mr. Speaker, we all know that Solzhenitsyn wrote the book ``Gulag 
Archipelago,'' and yet there are more gulags in China than there were 
in the Soviet Union. Yet today China's repressed hear only that the 
United States continues to deal with their repressor and ignores their 
suffering. How do we think a dissident in China feels when he sees that 
the Clinton administration is in support of MFN and wants to delink 
with regard to human rights and MFN?
  For foreign policy realists, those who believe that power rather than 
principle should drive foreign policy, the case for revoking MFN is 
equally compelling. Principle or power. ``The People's Liberation 
Army,'' and I quote, ``is engaged in an unprecedented buildup and is 
selling its weapons to terrorist regimes,'' Bauer points out. China 
maintains a trade surplus in the United States that is fast approaching 
$50 billion. We sell 15 billion dollars' worth of goods to China, but 
we buy almost 50 billion dollars' worth of goods in return and as a 
result have put a lot of American workers out of jobs.
  Many people in jail in China, as I told my colleagues, in Beijing 
Prison No. 1 and other slave labor camps are working on goods that are 
being exported to the United States. In fact, I visited Beijing Prison 
No. 1, a jail where Tiananmen Square demonstrators were working on 
making socks for export to the United States. And yet our workers had 
to compete with people who are in gulags and slave labor camps and 
jails.
  Mr. Speaker, I have long believed that the benefits of standing with 
the victims of tyranny far outweigh the short-term economic sacrifices 
of dealing with dictators. Morally, economically, and militarily, the 
case for revoking China's MFN status gets stronger each year.
  In summary, Mr. Speaker, I would put Mr. Bauer's whole article in the 
Record. I would encourage my colleagues to read it.
  I will close this as something we should all think about as we folks 
face this issue in the next couple of weeks. There are Catholic priests 
and bishops in jail in China and have been there for a long while, and 
some have been recently arrested. There are Protestant pastors in 
China. On a weekly basis they go into house churches and arrest people. 
They have plundered Tibet and have expelled the Dalai Lama.

                              {time}  1600

  They are prosecuting those in the Moslem faith in the northwest 
region of their country. They have sold military equipment to the 
Iranian government. Just as recently as not very long ago, according to 
an article in the Washington Times this Friday, they have sold nuclear 
technology information to the Pakistan Government, which could 
destabilize the nuclear proliferation issue. They have more gulags in 
that country than they had in the Soviet Union, and yet we were so

[[Page H1454]]

concerned about those in the Soviet Union, as we should have been, but 
we do not seem to be very concerned about what is taking place in 
China.
  They have an organ donor program whereby they kill prisoners, line 
them up, and we have it on film, shoot them, and then the doctors take 
their kidneys out and sell them for transplantation for kidneys to 
people in the West for $35,000 and $40,000. We have a trade imbalance 
of almost $40 billion.
  And many times, if you hear people speak, they will speak about the 
Declaration of Independence. I am blessed to represent the State of 
Virginia where Thomas Jefferson, one of our leaders and Presidents and 
Governor, wrote the words in the Declaration of Independence while he 
was residing in the city of Philadelphia where he said ``We hold these 
truths to be self-evident, that all men,'' and women, ``are created 
equal, endowed by their Creator''; that means given by God, not by some 
Executive order by some administration or some legislative fiat, but 
endowed by God, given by their Creator, ``with inalienable rights of 
life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.''
  Now when Jefferson wrote those words he did not mean life, liberty, 
and the pursuit of happiness for people from Charlottesville or only 
from Virginia, but he meant it for the United States, he meant it for 
the people in China, he meant it for the people in Africa, he meant it 
for the people all round the world.
  So when we think of these issues, do we want to stand with those of 
power, or do we want to stand with those with regard to principle, and 
I maintain for all of these reasons, economic reasons and defense 
reasons, but fundamentally for the life, liberty, and the pursuit of 
happiness reasons, those people of faith who are being persecuted in 
the country of China, we should deny MFN, and when we denied MFN to 
Romania back in the mid-1980's because of the activity it was doing of 
persecuting those of faith, the next day on Radio Free Europe in little 
villages throughout Romania on their little crystal sets they heard the 
word that the United States Congress, the House of Representatives, the 
people's body, had taken a stand on behalf of those people of faith, 
and that made a tremendous difference. And when we take a stand in this 
body in the next several months on behalf of people of faith, it will 
be one of our finest hours when we deny MFN to China.
  Mr. Speaker, I include for the Record the Gary Bauer article I 
referred to.

               [From the Washington Post, Apr. 13, 1997]

                Why People of Faith Must Challenge China

                            (By Gary Bauer)

       The ground is shifting in the debate over renewal of most 
     favored nation (MFN) trading status for China. New evidence 
     of intensifying Chinese repression of religious liberty and 
     political dissent is drawing into the argument a collection 
     of religious and family-values organizations who sat out the 
     MFN debate in 1996 and thereby ceded the field to economic 
     interests, especially multinational businesses and Wall 
     Street. We are sitting out no longer. Sometime next month, 
     President Clinton will seek another year-long extension of 
     China's favorable status in American trade law. When he does, 
     Congress should hold a more searching discussion than we've 
     had in past years. Then the president's request should be 
     rejected. Morality and realism--too often considered the 
     poles of this debate--both now clearly dictate the same 
     course. Unless it changes its ways, China should be a 
     disfavored nation in every aspect of American foreign policy.
       For social conservatives, the most compelling--though not 
     the only--reason is repression of China's growing religious 
     community. The government views as subversive the estimated 
     100 million Buddhists, 17 million Muslins, 8 million 
     Catholics and 30 million Protestants worshiping outside the 
     state-controlled ``patriotic church'' system.
       Repression ranges from ransacking homes in Tibet in search 
     of banned pictures of the Dalai Lama to destroying or closing 
     some 18,000 Buddhist shrines in Zhejiang province last 
     spring. Ministers, priests and monks are routinely arrested, 
     imprisoned, tortured and sometimes killed for the mere 
     expression of their faith. Pastor Wong, who runs 40 
     evangelical churches in Wuhan, was released in December after 
     a fourth arrest for spreading the Gospel. This time his 
     captors broke several of his fingers with pliers. Last month, 
     just before Easter, police invaded the apartment of Roman 
     Catholic Bishop Fan Zhongliang of Shanghai, seizing Bibles 
     and other religious items.
       These events form the core of the arguments we are making 
     on Capitol Hill, and members of Congress have begun to 
     rethink their positions. In the past few weeks, formerly 
     ``safe'' House Republican votes for the renewal of MFN, like 
     Majority Leader Dick Armey (Tex.) and Reps. John Kasich 
     (Ohio), Fred Upton (Mich.), Peter Hoekstra (Mich.) and Bill 
     Paxon (N.Y.), have voiced new doubts about the wisdom of the 
     status quo.
       In a letter to leaders of both parties earlier this year, I 
     told them that the vote on MFN for China will no longer be a 
     one-sided debate between big business and a handful of 
     critics. My letter carried the support of Richard Land of the 
     Southern Baptist Convention, James Dobson of Focus on the 
     Family, Ralph Reed of the Christian Coalition, the Rev. 
     Richard John Neuhaus of the Institute for Religion and Public 
     Life, Ron Sider of Evangelicals for Social Action, and 19 
     other individuals and groups. Among us we have a combined 
     membership of 25 million Americans.
       Joined with labor and human rights groups, this is a 
     formidable alliance--as it will need to be. The opposing 
     Business Coalition for U.S.-China Trade is marshaling the 
     lobbying efforts of more than a thousand multinational 
     corporations and trade associations. But I believe that our 
     involvement brings particular strengths because of our own 
     pro-business record. We disagree in this case because turning 
     a blind eye to the torture of fellow believers, winking at 
     forced abortions, and ignoring slave labor camps and summary 
     executions are too high a markup for people who are both 
     economic and social conservatives.
       But all Americans have a historic attachment to the ideal 
     of human rights. Jewish leaders, because of their activities 
     on behalf of Soviet Jews in the 1970s and 1980s, have 
     effectively reminded Christians of their responsibility to 
     help their brethren in China. We should have learned through 
     bitter experience that aggressive and despotic regimes that 
     abuse their own people seldom stop there. Soon they rise up 
     to undermine our allies and, ultimately, to threaten us.
       President Clinton entered office on an explicit pledge to 
     revive the moral basis of U.S. policy on China, which had 
     been left in ruins at Tiananmen Square. He said he would 
     abandon the accommodating posture of President Bush and deal 
     more firmly with the men his running mate, Al Gore, called 
     the ``butchers of Beijing.'' In particular, Clinton said, he 
     would make the 1994 renewal of MFN--then and always the most 
     significant element in Sino-U.S. relations--conditional on 
     improvements in China's abysmal human rights record.
       When 1994 arrived, there was no evidence of human rights 
     progress. But the Clinton administration, in an exercise of 
     misguided pragmatism, abandoned its own promises and 
     ``delinked'' human rights from trade. Ever since, the 
     administration has single-mindedly pursued a policy of 
     ``engagement'' with Beijing like no other in the history of 
     U.S. contact with a communist regime. ``Realism'' requires 
     it, according to the administration.
       Let's be realistic, then, about the fruits of current China 
     policy. Besides China's apparent attempt to influence U.S. 
     elections (a story that is painfully unfolding each day), we 
     have the spectacle of American business interests ratcheting 
     up the level of accommodation even as Beijing tightens the 
     thumbscrews of repression. Today, elements of the U.S. 
     business community say annual renewal of MFN is not enough: 
     Let's make China's status permanent, and throw in World Trade 
     Organization membership and terminate sanctions on high-tech 
     exports to China, to boot.
       To understand how well this strategy will work now, 
     consider 1994. At the very time President Clinton abandoned 
     his MFN stance, the Chinese moved to crush religious freedom 
     and began a brutal anti-clerical campaign. Premier Li Peng's 
     Orders 144 and 145 banned all religious expression conducted 
     outside China's state-run churches. China's timing was 
     doubtlessly designed to test our mettle. Finding none, there 
     came more turns of the screw. The U.S. State Department 
     confirmed this in February in its report on human rights 
     abuses. ``Overall in 1996, the authorities stepped up efforts 
     to cut off expressions of protest of criticism.'' The same 
     went for ``non-approved religious groups, including 
     Protestant and Catholic groups.''
       Under the theories of constructive engagement, the past few 
     years of America's de-moralized China policy should have 
     produced at least some progress. In fact, the regime in 
     Beijing has had every incentive to extend some olive branch 
     on human rights issues. That it has chosen the opposite 
     course should strike the advocates of cooperation of galling. 
     But they are not easily galled.
       U.S. corporate opportunities in China's emerging economy, 
     we are told, are too lucrative to be ``held hostage'' to 
     human rights principles. ``Hectoring'' Beijing about its 
     tyrannical behavior is counterproductive. China, the Clinton 
     administration believes, will become a modern, civilized 
     nation only when it is offered full membership in the 
     community of civilized nations.
       Today, three years after that invitation was extended, 
     Beijing continues to maintain a giant gulag of extra-judicial 
     forced-labor camps called laogai. The cadres continue to 
     impose a ruthless population-control program of forced 
     sterilization and abortion. These systemic practices rival 
     the worst abuses that occurred during seven decades of 
     communist rule in the Soviet Union. U.S. human rights policy 
     was never ``delinked'' from Moscow's behavior toward its own 
     citizens. And the Soviet Union was never a ``most favored'' 
     trading partner of the United States.
       So much for the moral benefits of engagement. But the 
     broader goals of American foreign policy haven't been 
     achieved either. The

[[Page H1455]]

     People's Liberation Army is engaged in an unprecedented 
     buildup and is selling its weapons to terrorist regimes. 
     Meanwhile, we annually export a paltry $15 billion in goods 
     to the mainland's largely closed markets, yet we buy $50 
     billion in return. If American policy is going to stand on 
     ``bread alone,'' it should be better bread than this.
       Admission to the company of civilized nations should 
     require, at the very least, civilized behavior. How can the 
     free world be ``free'' is it admits to its ranks, for favored 
     commercial and diplomatic treatment, a burgeoning super-power 
     that is the very definition of tyranny? It can't. Ronald 
     Reagan, who peacefully ended the Cold War with a hard-nosed 
     realism that was derived from morality, not deprived of it, 
     understood this truth. And a Republican-majority Congress 
     that claims Reagan's legacy should never forget it.

                          ____________________