[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 148 (Wednesday, October 29, 1997)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E2116-E2117]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      JIANG ZEMIN CONQUERS AMERICA

                                 ______
                                 

                        HON. GERALD B.H. SOLOMON

                              of new york

                    in the house of representatives

                      Wednesday, October 29, 1997

  Mr. SOLOMON. Mr. Speaker, as President Clinton and Jiang Zemin engage 
in their fulsome lovefest this week, we would do well to remember just 
who Jiang Zemin is and just what he represents. Bluntly, Jiang is a 
criminal tyrant who presides over one of the most inhuman regimes in 
the world, which just happens to be engaged in a massive, anti-American 
arms buildup. The editorial board of the Weekly Standard has 
brilliantly outlined this inconvenient fact, and I would like to submit 
their editorial for the Record.

                      Jiang Zemin Conquers America

       Smooth, Western-style media skills do not come naturally to 
     Chinese Communists. At a press briefing here in Washington 
     last Wednesday, a reporter asked Chinese embassy propagandist 
     Yu Shuning to summarize the intended theme of Jiang Zemin's 
     big U.S. tour. China's maximum leader has an impressive 
     series of photo-ops on his schedule: the U.S.S. Arizona 
     Memorial in Honolulu, Colonial Williamsburg, the White House 
     and the Capitol, Independence Hall in Philadelphia, the 
     trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange, and so on. 
     What's it all about, Yu was asked, ``What image does 
     President Jiang want to create for himself at sites like 
     Pearl Harbor and the Liberty Bell?''
       Yu was flummoxed by the Liberty Bell. Pearl Harbor and 
     what, he wondered? Then Yu needed help with the question 
     itself: ``What kind of image?'' Right, the reporter 
     persisted: ``What kind of image would he like to create for 
     himself?'' Pause, ``I have already said,'' Yu finally 
     responded, ``President Jiang will bring images to the United 
     States.''
       Indeed, he will. There is, for example, the image of Wei 
     Jingsheng in confinement at a Hebei-province concentration 
     camp called the Nanpu New Life Salt Works. Though he was 
     recently passed over for the 1997 Nobel peace prize in favor 
     of some hippie from Vermont, Wei remains the world's leading 
     prisoner of conscience, locked up all but six months of the 
     past 18 years for ``illegal'' activism in behalf of 
     democracy. Reliable details of his current condition--he is 
     said to be gravely ill--are impossible to obtain. But we may 
     fairly guess at the daily ordeal he and countless thousands 
     like him suffer.
       The dissident Liu Qing was subjected to a lengthy prison 
     term in the 1980s for the ``crime'' of publishing a 
     transcript of Wei Jingsheng's 1979 show trial. At the end of 
     a brief hunger strike, Liu has since written, he was tied to 
     a ``special metal chair.'' Other prisoners ``lifted my legs 
     in the air while kneading and pressing down on my stomach.'' 
     One of them ``squeezed my throat tight and pinched my nose 
     shut.'' A prison official ``stuck a metal brace in my mouth, 
     twisting it open so wide that the skin on the corners of my 
     mouth ripped open.'' The official then ``clamped a pair 
     of metal pliers onto my tongue, pulling it way out of my 
     mouth before sliding a length of tubing into my 
     esophagus.'' Liu next had his stomach pumped full of salt 
     broth, after which ``the floor was covered with pools of 
     blood'' and ``my mouth was a numb and swollen mound of raw 
     flesh.''
       There you have it in a nutshell: the central problem 
     confronting Sino-U.S. relations generally and this week's 
     Jiang-Clinton summit in particular. China is a hideous, 
     aggressive, unapologetic despotism, and Jiang Zemin is 
     China's unapologetic despot-in-chief. Shall the United States 
     notice these facts and conduct its China diplomacy 
     accordingly? Or shall the United States largely ignore these 
     facts--since any commensurate response might threaten 
     American corporate profits in the Chinese market--and 
     celebrate Jiang Zemin and his dictatorship as worthy and 
     valued players on the international stage?
       Needless to say, we know the answer already--it has been 
     official U.S. policy since 1994. During his pre-summit 
     address last Friday, Bill Clinton touched oh-so-delicately on 
     the essential character of Jiang's regime, explaining it away 
     as the product of China's search for order in a time of 
     profound change. America itself is not ``blameless in our 
     social fabric,'' the president reminded his listeners. And 
     though we may disagree with the Chinese about important 
     matters, he advised, we must nevertheless cooperate with 
     them.
       You can't wrest much serious political cooperation from 
     people who ``disagree'' about something so basic as freedom, 
     of course, and administration spokesmen have for weeks been 
     careful to minimize practical expectations for the summit. 
     The Chinese may sign a few of those minor agreements they 
     habitually violate as soon as the ink is dry, and that's 
     about it. But in the narcotic inertia of Sino-U.S. 
     ``engagement'' diplomacy, substance is not really the point. 
     Mere manners are the message. And the message, this week as 
     always, is ``nice.''
       They will be nice to Jiang Zemin at the White House on 
     Wednesday. He will get a 21-gun salute and a state dinner and 
     a concert by the National Symphony Orchestra. He will get all 
     this ``first-class'' ceremony, explains someone from the 
     National Security Council's Asia office, because he is ``the 
     leader of a great nation who deserves to be treated with 
     respect and dignity.''
       They will be nice to Jiang Zemin at the Capitol on 
     Thursday, where a breakfast banquet will be thrown for him 
     behind the safety of closed doors. No China-related 
     legislation will reach the House or Senate floor this week, 
     the Republican leadership has promised. Candid debate about 
     China policy, Newt Gingrich's press secretary says, might 
     ``appear an insult'' to their visitor. Can't have that.
       The National Park Service and Drexel University will be 
     nice to Jiang in Philadelphia. Former president George Bush 
     and the CEOs of AT&T, Kodak, and IBM will be nice to Jiang in 
     New York. Harvard University will be nice to Jiang in 
     Cambridge; school officials tell the Los Angeles Times that 
     the audience for his scheduled speech there ``has been 
     carefully `groomed and sifted' to avoid embarrassing 
     confrontations.'' The Boeing and Hughes corporations will be 
     nice to Jiang in Long Beach and El Segundo.
       This is what the Chinese want, more than anything else. 
     They want to be dealt with politely, as equals, people just 
     like us, people

[[Page E2117]]

     you would be proud to take home to Mother. They are working 
     hard to achieve this goal, in their ham-fisted way. ``We try 
     to make some PR job,'' one Chinese ``expert on the United 
     States'' tells the Washington Post.
       And how depressing it is, nauseating even, to see elite 
     America eagerly collaborate in the construction of this 
     spin--which is, at bottom, after all, a lie of gigantic 
     proportions, Jiang Zemin, Time magazine tells us, loves Benny 
     Goodman, Mozart, and Elvis, too. He knows the Gettysburg 
     Address by heart. He has ``favorite American authors,'' the 
     Los Angeles Times reports: ``Mark Twain and''--we're not 
     making this up--``Zbigniew Brzezinski.'' He's a big, cuddly 
     teddy bear of a man, apparently.
       Jiang is also a man, of course, who tells American 
     journalists that ``democracy and human rights are relative 
     concepts.'' And that Wei Jingsheng is a common criminal, not 
     a ``so-called'' political dissident. And that China's rape of 
     Tibet was in fact a successful effort to rescue that country 
     from slavery, like our own Civil War, and that ``the American 
     people should be happy'' about it. Jiang issues these 
     spectacular insults, all of them in the last few weeks, but 
     draws no official and direct American rebuke or demurral. 
     Rebuking him wouldn't be nice, you see.
       The master of the Nanpu New Life Salt Works has no business 
     invoking Abraham Lincoln, or appearing next to the Liberty 
     Bell, or drinking champagne at the White House. It diminishes 
     American principle that he has been invited to do such 
     things. It diminishes American principle further that he will 
     be applauded for it by our elected leaders, by our college 
     presidents and Kissingers, by our business chieftains, by our 
     ``sophisticated'' opinion leaders.
       The task of rescuing American honor this week will fall to 
     those allegedly unsophisticated protesters who will dog Jiang 
     Zemin wherever he goes, exercising their rights under what Yu 
     Shuning calls ``the First Amendment of the Constitution, et 
     cetera.'' We hope the protests are as large and loud and 
     obnoxious as possible. It won't be ``nice.'' But it will be 
     right.

  A particularly astonishing feature of this week's sham summit will be 
President Clinton's laughable attempt to implement the 1985 Nuclear 
Cooperation Agreement. Presumably with a straight face, President 
Clinton will actually send a piece of paper to Congress shortly which 
will ``certify'' that China is a responsible steward of nuclear 
technology. Of course, this is a lie. For proof, the Washington Times 
has provided us with a succinct box score that sums up China's criminal 
record of nuclear and other weapons proliferation. The list is long and 
frightening, and the President's policy is a dangerous disgrace. No one 
has written on this more eloquently than Abe Rosenthal in the October 
28 New York Times, and I insert both his article and the Washington 
Times proliferation list for the Record.

                      China's Proliferation Record

       China in recent months has sold an array of nuclear-, 
     chemical- and biological-weapons technology and missile 
     technology to nations seeking weapons of mass destruction. 
     Here are some of the known transfers:
       Telemetry equipment was provided to Iran for missile tests 
     on the medium-range Shahab-3 and Shahab-4 missile program in 
     violation of the Missile Technology Control Regime.
       Rocket motors and test equipment were shipped to Iran for a 
     new short-range missile known as the NP-110, which was tested 
     in May.
       Equipment to develop deadly biological weapons was sent to 
     Iran. A Chinese-supplied factory that produces glass-lined 
     equipment was opened earlier this year.
       400 metric tons of chemicals used in producing nerve agents 
     and riot-control agents were shipped to Iran last year. In 
     May, sanctions were imposed on seven Chinese companies that 
     sold chemical weapons goods and equipment to Iran.
       Accelerometers and gyroscopes for missiles were supplied to 
     Iran in 1996.
       Furnace and diagnostic equipment with nuclear weapons 
     applications were sold to Pakistan in late 1996--after a May 
     1996 pledge by Beijing not to sell nuclear technology.
       Five French-made Super Puma helicopters with Chinese air-
     launched missiles were promised to Iran under a 1996 deal 
     that also involved Indonesia.
       5,000 ring magnets were sold to Khan Research Laboratories 
     in Pakistan in 1996. The magnets were assessed by U.S. 
     intelligence to be a major boost to Islamabad's production of 
     nuclear-weapons fuel.
       M-11 missiles were sold to Pakistan in 1995 and 1996. U.S. 
     intelligence believes the missiles are operational, but the 
     administration ignored the finding to avoid applying 
     sanctions.
       Missile-patrol boats equipped with scores of advanced C-802 
     anti-ship cruise missiles were sold to Iran in 1996. They 
     provide a new capability to attack U.S. or allied ships in 
     the Persian Gulf.
       Missile technology was sold last year to Syria.
       A complete factory for producing M-11 missiles or systems 
     of similar ranges was sold to Pakistan in 1996.


     
                                  ____
                Clinton's Nuclear Deception--On My Mind

                          (By A.M. Rosenthal)

       Craftily, ever so craftily, President Clinton is deceiving 
     the American public about a critical danger to world 
     security: China's international sales of the materiel and 
     technology of nuclear warfare.
       The motive is to allow China to buy American nuclear 
     materiel and information, including advanced U.S. nuclear 
     reactor technology--as U.S. nuclear manufacturers are urging.
       No previous President, and not even Mr. Clinton himself 
     until now, would take the step required to permit Chinese 
     nuclear shopping in America--certifying that China was not 
     illicitly peddling its own nuclear goods abroad.
       The U.S. knew that was not true.
       The U.S. knew that despite Beijing's denials and pledges, 
     for more than a decade China has made important nuclear sales 
     to countries intent on achieving capability to make nuclear 
     bombs.
       Under a 1985 U.S. law, nations illegally proliferating 
     nuclear materiel and technology are subject to American 
     sanctions. They are also forbidden to buy U.S. nuclear 
     products and technology.
       Now Mr. Clinton is ready to permit American nuclear sales 
     to China. So last Friday, in his speech setting the stage for 
     the state visit of President Jiang Zemin, he made this 
     statement:
       ``China has lived up to its pledge not to assist 
     unsafeguarded nuclear facilities in third countries, and it 
     is developing a system of export controls to prevent the 
     transfer or sale of technology for weapons of mass 
     destruction.''
       Neither part of that sentence is honest.
       In 1992, after selling nuclear-war materiel to Iran, Iraq 
     and Algeria among other countries, China signed the worldwide 
     Nonproliferation Treaty against spreading knowledge and 
     nuclear weapons to states that did not possess them.
       Three years later, U.S. intelligence discovered that the 
     China National Nuclear Energy Industry Corporation, a 
     Beijing-controlled operation, had sold 5,000 ring magnets to 
     Pakistan, which is trying to match India's nuclear-weapon 
     potential. Experts say that sale could increase Pakistan's 
     weapon capability by jumping its enriched-uranium capacity 
     100 percent.
       The magnets are a product China sold to Saddam Hussein 
     before the gulf war.
       The U.S. also found that the magnets went to 
     ``unsafeguarded'' Pakistani facilities--no international 
     inspection permitted. Teams of U.N. inspectors have spent 
     almost six years trying to find all of Saddam's 
     ``unsafeguarded'' hidden nuclear capability.
       Violating the treaty should have brought sanctions. 
     Washington complained but imposed no penalty.
       China denied the sale. Then on May 11, 1996, it promised 
     not to do it again. Mr. Clinton's speech said nothing about 
     China's nuclear deals and treaty-breaking--or what the C.I.A. 
     told Congress in June 1997.
       The C.I.A. reported that during the second half of 1996, 
     after the pledge to the U.S., China was still the ``primary 
     source of nuclear related equipment and technology'' to 
     Pakistan. Also, said the report, China is the world's ``most 
     significant supplier of weapons of mass destruction-related 
     goods and technology''--which means nuclear, chemical or 
     bacteriological.
       The President did not mention China's breaking its pledge 
     to America after breaking its treaty pledge to the world. Nor 
     did he say that he was planning to reward China by giving it 
     clearance to shop nuclear in America. But he will, unless 
     Congress can block him.
       After China's broken pledges, will Americans be fools 
     enough to believe Beijing will keep new promises to become a 
     reformed proliferator or use U.S. nuclear technology for 
     ``peaceful purposes''? Just this year, after the usual 
     denials, Beijing admitted that U.S. machinery sold for 
     civilian manufacture was transferred to a military aviation 
     plant.
       That Clinton remark about China's developing export 
     controls is cynical acceptance of Beijing's cynical pretense 
     that any illicit nuclear exporting was the fault of sleepy 
     customs officials.
       The stuff of nuclear, bacteriological or chemical warfare 
     is not exported from China unless top officials approve. Mr. 
     Jiang is the toppest.
       President Clinton is crafty, but not crafty enough. He has 
     turned China's broken pledges into a guilt of his own--
     deception about a matter of life and death, many lives and 
     perhaps, some hideous day, many deaths.

     

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