[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 75 (Thursday, June 11, 1998)]
[House]
[Page H4541]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                                 CHINA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from California (Mr. Rohrabacher) is recognized for 5 
minutes.
  Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, President Clinton seems like he is 
absolutely committed on this upcoming trip to China. We have asked him 
to reconsider this trip and, no, he will not reconsider the trip. And 
Congress officially asked him whether or not he would at least attempt 
not to do something in Tiananmen Square which would then make a mockery 
of the human rights commitments of this country by holding some sort of 
meeting with people who murdered hundreds if not thousands of human 
rights activists at that very same location 10 years ago. But, again, 
we were rebuffed in that request as well. The President of the United 
States as the President of the world's leading democracy will visit, 
then, the world's leading human rights abuser, the world's most 
powerful totalitarian regime.
  Well, this President does have an excuse. Yes, in the past President 
Reagan visited China and so did President Bush. But in the past when 
Presidents have visited China, I think it is important for us to 
understand that China at that time was in a transition, or going 
through changes that made it appear that China would someday evolve out 
of its dictatorship.

                              {time}  1800

  And thus it is all right to visit a country that is not free, but it 
seems to be going in the right direction in that its government is 
permitting more freedoms. Unfortunately that is not the case for this 
Presidential visit. China, since the killings at Tiananmen Square, has 
become even more tyrannical, and more belligerent, and more aggressive 
and has more power to commit aggression against its neighbors.
  Spokesmen for the administration say that the President will be 
calling for a strategic partnership with this Communist regime. Well, 
naturally calling for a strategic partnership with this totalitarian 
regime, this powerful totalitarian regime, is causing concern among 
other countries in that region that are democratic countries.
  We have already seen the results of the folly of the President's 
policies. India felt obliged to reaffirm its own nuclear arsenal with 
an explosion, of a nuclear explosion. The Pakistanis followed. So what 
we have is an unrest in the subcontinent and a greater chance for 
conflict, a massive, horrible conflict, between the Pakistanis and the 
Indians because of this unrest and this proliferation that can be 
traced right back to the President's China policies. In other words, 
the world is not as safe as it was.
  Then we have lesser gangsters in the world like you find in Kosova 
where you have a murderous regime next door in Serbia thinking that 
they can go into Kosova and murder people in order to get them to 
submit. Now why are they doing this? Why does the regime, Milosevic's 
regime, which was guilty of so many human rights abuses in Bosnia 
earlier, now feel that they could perhaps do it again? It is because 
this administration has lost its moral basis, has lost its standing, 
has lost the principles in which it had so that in which people gave it 
respect if residing with those principles.
  There are credible reports from Kosova that indicate that a repeat of 
the most horrific acts that we have seen in the Balkans is going on 
right now. Milosevic and his goons, the Serbian dictatorship, the last 
Communist dictatorship on the continent of Europe, have turned their 
bloody knives on the people of Kosova especially targeting vulnerable 
civilian populations for ethnic cleansing, not only in the border 
areas, but deep into the heartland of Kosova where the people are 
almost all Albanian, of Albanian extraction. It is incredible that 
despite the assurances by this administration that their diplomacy is 
succeeding in calming down Mr. Milosevic and keeping him under control, 
we are seeing numerous reports of entire villages being wiped out, with 
the news media discovering pools of blood in the streets of these 
villages. We have reports from family members of Albanians, men having 
their throats slit right in front of their families and of 
indiscriminate artillery bombardment of marketplaces.
  Mr. Speaker, our government and our European allies should not stand 
by and wring their hands. We must act forcefully, and we must stand on 
principle. Unfortunately the pronouncements of this administration as 
far as tyrants, whether they are big and small, it seems that these 
pronouncements by this administration are not being taken seriously.
  We can see in China where they continue their own proliferation of 
the nuclear technology that we have given them as well as building up 
their forces, their military forces, and stepping up their opposition 
and here with a small dictatorship when we face that dictatorship of 
Milosevic in Serbia.
  The world is a less safe place because we strayed from our 
fundamental principles.

                          ____________________