[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 49 (Wednesday, April 23, 1997)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3564-S3566]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




        THE THEME IS FREEDOM: RECONSIDERING U.S.-SINO RELATIONS

 Mr. ASHCROFT. Mr. President, no one did more to bring peace 
and prosperity in our time than our 40th President, Ronald Reagan. 
President Reagan's economic and foreign policies gave us the longest 
peacetime expansion in our history and made the world safe again for 
democracy. But more than that, Ronald Reagan called us to our highest 
and best: we never spoke with more certainty or sat taller in the 
saddle than when Ronald Reagan was riding point.
  In his farewell address, Reagan told a wonderful story, a story of a 
refugee and an American sailor. In the early eighties, the U.S.S. 
Midway was patrolling the South China Sea when the crew happened upon a 
small craft, a decrepit little boat crammed with refugees trying to 
make their way to America. The Midway's captain sent a small launch to 
bring the ship to safety. And as they made their way toward the tiny 
vessel, a refugee glimpsed a crewman on deck and called out, ``Hello, 
American sailor. Hello freedom man.''
  It was, as Reagan noted, ``a small moment with a big meaning.'' 
Throughout our history, America has

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been a nation dedicated to a proposition, a country committed to 
freedom--freedom of religion, of speech, of assembly, and of the press. 
That undying devotion has allowed us to know both wealth and power, for 
they are the natural fruit of the democratic ideal. From manufacturing 
to basic science, from aerospace to the arts, it is a material 
abundance and cultural vitality heretofore unseen.
  And freedom is the song America has sung across the globe whether 
marshaling her troops or providing resources for the Marshall plan. 
Five times in this century patriot's blood has been spilled in the 
fight for freedom around the world. That is our history, it is our 
common calling, it is our shared wisdom.
  And so as we stand on the verge of a new century, with the greatest 
technological and material advances mankind has ever known, we would do 
well to ask ourselves: how stands the cause of freedom? Not just in the 
Western Hemisphere, but around the world. For while America is safer, 
stronger, more prosperous today than at any time in recent history, a 
sound like a bell tolls softly in the night; and it warns of coming 
conflict.
  Mr. President, there is a destabilizing force in the Pacific rim 
today--and it is not the Asian democracies. There is an entity, which 
through its emerging economic and military might, intends to assert its 
power--and it is not the Asian democracies. There is a political system 
that sees as its enemy the free people of the world--and it is not the 
Asian democracies. No, the expansionist force in Asia is Communist 
China, a country that cares little for international law, and even less 
for the sacred nature of human life.
  Now, Americans have long known of the existence of evil in the human 
heart. And yet strangely, we are loathe to confess it. We are 
Jefferson's children, unrequited romantics, believers in the innate 
goodness of man. But experience is both the best and most expensive 
teacher. And it has taught us a costly lesson that I fear is being 
lost: ``Totalitarians do not stop--they must be stopped.''
  Communist China is presently engaged in a military build-up that is 
as spectacular as it is unsettling. The weapon's bazaar open for 
business in Beijing includes a blue water navy and a 21st century air 
force that will give China the capacity to exercise power throughout 
the Pacific. Russia alone has sold billions of dollars of military 
technology to the Chinese, including cruise missile(s) capable of 
defeating the antimissile defenses of the United States Navy.
  These force-projection technologies are not about provid[ing] for the 
common defense; they are about providing an uncommon capacity to 
project power. They threaten not just the democracies of Asia, but the 
American sailors of the 7th Fleet who in the name of peace call the 
waters of the South China Sea home.
  Just as troubling as Beijing's buying binge is its decision to sell 
missile and nuclear technology to Pakistan, Syria, and Iran. Over time, 
this equipment will allow each to produce bomb-grade uranium. Now, 
China contends that the sales are nothing more than a mutually 
agreeable exchange between sovereign nations. But the dispatch of 
cruise missiles to Iran has placed United States forces in harm's way. 
For let us recall that it was a lesser version of this same missile 
that took the lives of 37 American sailors aboard the U.S.S. Stark.
  As if this were not enough, Communist China has undertaken another 
drive: a campaign of persecution and repression aimed at crushing 
internal dissent. Beijing's policies of torture, arbitrary arrest, and 
execution in Tibet have made horror ordinary.
  Today, the President has an opportunity to challenge state 
persecution and champion individual freedom by formally receiving the 
Dalai Lama. Unfortunately, administration thinking on his visit seems 
as muddled as our China policy itself. Why is it that the President has 
an open door policy for Chinese arms dealers, but the Dalai Lama must 
be slipped through the White House back door? We should embrace the 
people of China who yearn to breathe free, not toast the tyrants who 
ordered tanks into Tiananmen Square.
  Or, consider the case of Bishop Su. Hung from the ceiling by his 
wrists, Su was battered time and again about the head until all but 
unconscious. He was then placed in a cell filled with water where he 
was left for days, unable to sit or [to] sleep. Tragically, Su is but 
one of untold hundreds that have been beaten and killed. Their high 
crime? A fidelity to God and the desire to exercise that devotion.
  And who will condemn such barbarism? The administration has made not 
a sound. Well, I would respectively remind them that to sin by silence 
makes cowards out of men; and an act of cowardice this great has not 
been seen since Hemingway's Macumber heard the lion's roar.
  As for United States exporters, there is little denying trade with 
China has been of great value. United States goods and services exports 
to China have increased from $3.5 billion to over $14 billion in the 
last decade alone. From power generation equipment to automotive parts, 
China has pursued Western consumer goods as a means by which to fuel 
its military expansion. The West has willingly obliged. But at what 
cost, and to what end?
  Chinese import duties are still five times higher on average than 
those imposed by the U.S. and quadruple those of Japan. Nearly half of 
Chinese imports are subject to further barriers. And certain key 
industries such as electronics, aircraft, and telecommunications are 
shielded from competition altogether. It would seem that 18th century 
mercantilism is alive and well in 20th century China.
  Mr. President, China's trade policies are about selective market 
access that ensure merchandise trade deficits as far as the eye can 
see; on human rights, Beijing is showing the world a reign of terror 
unparalleled in the post-cold-war era; and a tour of the Pacific rim's 
horizon finds a Chinese defense buildup aimed at achieving superpower 
status at the Asian democracies, expense.
  So what, then, is to be done? Just a decade ago, the vast majority of 
the Congress seemed to understand who our enemies were and why. But 
some in Washington today seem confused about what is a decent political 
system and what is not, which philosophies should be embraced or 
rejected, what is right and what is wrong.
  We will never tame the Chinese dragon--no more than we subdued the 
Soviet bear--with the policies of appeasement. The way to bring China 
into the community of nations, as Michael Ledeen and others have 
argued, is to talk truthfully and forcefully about the evils found 
there; challenge Beijing to grant more political and economic freedom 
to its people; and maintain a military superiority that makes the cost 
of conflict too high.
  There is an old Chinese proverb which says, ``When you want to test 
the depth of a stream, do not use both feet.'' To end diplomatic ties 
and cease trading with the most populous nation on Earth would be the 
march of folly. I do believe, however, that we must look anew at both 
the granting of most favored nation [MFN] status as well as China's 
acceptance into the World Trade Organization [WTO].
  For we are now approaching a critically important stage in United 
States-Sino relations as a new generation of leadership leaps forward. 
They must know that adventurism in Asia will meet a firm response. They 
must know we will not sanction the injuries and usurpations that the 
Chinese people have suffered at the hands of the state. They must know 
that we will support and defend democracy.
  The theme is freedom. And the fundamental principle upon which we 
should base U.S. trade policy is this: Truly free trade can only exist 
between free peoples. And the Chinese who watched treachery take hold 
in Tiananmen are most certainly not free.
  More than 300 years before the U.S.S. Midway patrolled the South 
China Sea, there was a great Puritan migration to a land called 
America. And on board a very different ship, the Arbella, John Winthrop 
preached a sermon entitled, ``A Modell of Christian Charity.'' In it, 
he laid out his expectations for the new colony; he spoke that, ``every 
man might have need of other'' and of a world ``knit more nearly 
together by the bond of brotherly affection.''
  Winthrop was an early freedom man and his, like Reagan's, was a 
transcendent vision. The society he foresaw was a true commonwealth, a 
community in which each person put the good

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of the whole ahead of private concern. It should not surprise us, then, 
that Winthrop's words upon arriving in America were some of Reagan's 
most frequently quoted: ``We shall be a city upon a hill, the eyes of 
all people are upon us.''
  Well, the eyes of all people are upon us again. And the question they 
ask? Will America continue to stand for freedom? Or, will she fall 
captive to policies born of confusion and conciliation. The answer we 
send will tell much about how brightly our city still shines.
  For we stand on the cusp of a new and exciting age. By all accounts, 
this has been the American century. The ideals that light our city have 
found comfort's warm embrace across the globe; democracy has triumphed; 
market capitalism reigns supreme. But alas, China's shadow looms large. 
And the decisions of today will determine whether America alone will 
shape the tomorrows in which we live. So let us resolve to once again 
hoist up the flag of freedom. Let us resolve to extol the virtues of 
democracy to all who will listen. And not because democracy is our form 
of government, but because democracy is the only peaceful form of 
government. With the hope that one day the long tug of memory might 
look favorably upon us as we look approvingly on the generations who 
answered freedom's call in decades passed.

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