[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 85 (Thursday, June 25, 1998)]
[House]
[Pages H5394-H5397]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        STANDING UP FOR FREEDOM

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 7, 1997, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Scarborough) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. SCARBOROUGH. Mr. Speaker, earlier today the Speaker talked about 
the historic moment that we had 50 years ago in this country when the 
Berlin airlift took place. He said a couple things that I wrote down 
here.
  He talked about the importance for America to continue to, quote, 
reject Communist oppression across the globe. And secondly, he talked 
about the importance of standing up for freedom.
  I think that is very important, and I think it is critical today, 50 
years later, that we do that, that we look and see what America is 
doing, to see if they are continuing to defend freedom across the globe 
the way that those that came before us did 50 years ago and the way 
that our Founding Fathers thought we should do.
  Unfortunately, today I am concerned, as are a lot of other 
Republicans and Democrats, about what this administration is doing 
halfway across the globe in Communist China. The gentlewoman from 
California (Ms. Pelosi) who has worked on human rights issues with 
myself and others said this today:

       There is no improvement in human rights there. The 
     President can say that China has improved its human rights 
     record because it exiled forcibly two dissidents. But we 
     don't call that progress.

  Earlier this week the Washington Post, on Tuesday June 23rd, had this 
to say about human rights in China:

       Li Hai, 44 years old, a former teacher at the Chinese 
     Medical College, is now serving a 9 year prison sentence in 
     Beijing's prison. His crime, assembling a list of people who 
     were jalied for taking part in pro-democracy demonstrations 
     in Tiananmen Square in 1989. From the Beijing area alone, he 
     documented more than 700. Of those, 158, mostly workers 
     rather than students, received sentences of more than 9 years 
     and are presumed to still be held for protesting for 
     democracy in Tiananmen Square back in 1989.
       Many were sentenced to a life in prison, from a 22 year old 
     to a 76 year old. Li Hai himself was convicted for prying 
     into and gathering state secrets.

  Now, in China, in Tiananmen Square, in the land where the President 
goes to talk about China's great progress on human rights, what the 
Communist government calls prying into and gathering state secrets is 
one individual, one citizen trying to find out who the Communist 
Chinese drug off to prison after they shot down and killed hundreds and 
maybe even thousands of demonstrators in Tiananmen Square.
  The Washington Post goes on to say,

       We thought of Mr. Li as we read President Clinton's 
     explanation in Newsweek yesterday of, Why I am going to 
     Beijing. Mr. Clinton wrote of the real progress that China 
     has made in human rights during the past year. That progress, 
     according to the President, consists of the release of 
     several prominent dissidents. How meager these 
     accomplishments in human rights really are becomes clear when 
     you stack them up against the administration's own decidedly 
     modest goals going back to 1996, when it had already 
     downgraded the priority of human rights.

  The Washington Post concludes,

       Tomorrow Mr. Clinton will leave for China. He is the first 
     President to visit since the Tiananmen Square massacre in 
     1989. His aides promise that he will speak out on human 
     rights there and that there is a chance that he will meet 
     with the mother of a student killed in Tiananmen Square. The 
     first could be valuable if his remarks are broadcast on 
     Chinese television. The second, an important symbol, 
     especially because many relatives of Tiananmen victims 
     continue to be persecuted and harassed. But Mr. Clinton's 
     comments should above all be honest. For the sake of Li Hai, 
     the 158 documented and the many that still cannot be found, 
     Mr. Clinton should not trumpet real progress in human rights 
     where no human rights record of progress exists.

  Going back to 1992, it is very interesting to follow what the 
President has said on human rights in China. I remember back during the 
campaign of 1992, when the President talked about the need to stand up 
to the butchers of Beijing, that is a position that I actually 
applauded because I was surprised that those of us in Congress and the 
administration did not do more following the brutal massacre in 1989.
  The President made that vow, but soon after he got elected, he forgot 
about that vow, just like he forgot about the promise to link human 
rights with trade. And he forgot to do that very quickly. And the 
result, as reported by A. M. Rosenthal in the New York Times, was 
disastrous.
  Religious freedoms and political speech continue to be crushed in 
China. Protestants and Catholics are thrown in jail. In fact, thrown 
into jail up to 2 years for simply having a bible at home and leading a 
bible study.

                              {time}  1900

  Over 400,000 are jailed right now. The New York Times and A. M. 
Rosenthal has reported that Christians and Buddhists continue to be 
savagely beaten, tortured in front of their families, and even killed 
for simply worshiping God as they choose.
  This past week, I went to a Tibet freedom rally on the west lawn. We 
heard Tibetans talk about what has happened in their culture and how 
the Tibetan culture continues to be crushed. Yet, in America, we ignore 
some stark numbers.
  We ignore the number 50. That is about how long the Communist Chinese 
have occupied Tibet. We ignore the number 1.2 million. That is the 
number of Tibetans that have been killed since the Chinese occupation. 
We continue to ignore the number 130,000. That is how many Tibetans 
today have been forced into exile. The number 250,000 is important 
because that is the number of Chinese troops occupying Tibet.
  And 60 million is a frightening number when you want to really gauge 
what type of regime the President is dealing with today in Tiananmen 
Square. To give all Americans a little historical perspective, 60 
million is the number of Chinese that have been killed by their own 
government since 1949, 60 million. The number is so high that it 
boggles the imagination.
  Let us put it into this perspective: Adolph Hitler was accused of 
killing 6 million Jews in the Holocaust. Hitler killed 6 million Jews, 
and has been termed as one of the most evil men of, not only this 
century, but in the history of western civilization, the history of the 
world. Yet, we have a regime that has murdered 10 times that amount of 
people, murdered 60 million.
  But that is a number that continues to fall on deaf ears in the 
United States. Why is that? I think it has something to do with another 
number, and that number is 9,000. And 9,000 is a very interesting 
number, you see, because that number is a number that mesmerizes 
politicians in Washington,

[[Page H5395]]

D.C. and in State capitals across this country. Nine thousand is a 
number that mesmerizes the wizards of Wall Street. Nine thousand is a 
number that mesmerizes those that work on Madison Avenue.
  Yes, 9,000 is the number that the Dow Jones continues to float 
around. It is about money. We are obsessed with finance. Let me tell 
you, there is nothing wrong with a strong Wall Street. There is nothing 
wrong with a Dow Jones over 9,000.
  I have been termed as a right wing fanatic, too conservative on 
fiscal issues. I believe in cutting taxes. I believe in abolishing the 
capital gains tax. I believe in abolishing the inheritance tax. I 
believe in cutting government spending radically. I believe in the free 
enterprise system.
  Socialism and Marxism as political theories lie on the dust bin of 
history. They are dead. Capitalism won. Pure unadulterated capitalism 
prevailed over the socialism and the communism of the Soviet Union.
  I like profit. I think profit is good for America. But we have to 
balance that with a few of the values that this country is supposed to 
be about. But everybody is so busy chasing profits across the globe to 
get the Dow Jones even higher that sometimes finance takes a front seat 
to freedom. Finance seems to take a front seat to American self-
interest.
  There is one defense contractor who is reported in the Wall Street 
Journal last year who actually was so rabidly pursuing a deal with 
China to sell airplanes to China that they sent their engineers over to 
China to talk to the engineers that worked on Chinese jet fighters, 
because they wanted to help the Chinese.
  To prove that they were good partners, and to prove that they 
deserved to get this deal, they wanted to help the Chinese engineers 
learn how to make their jet fighters more competitive with our jet 
fighters. All in pursuit of a deal.
  We have the CEO of another defense industry who wants to build more 
airplanes, that has supported me in the past, who continues to defend 
the actions of the Communist Chinese, despite the fact that all 
credible reports coming out of there continually show that oppression 
continues to reign.
  His quote last year was that there is more democracy and freedom in 
China than there is in America, because, after all, more Chinese vote. 
That is frightening logic. But it shows how desperate companies are to 
go over there, make bigger profits, help their stocks go up higher.
  If that affects the national security of the United States of 
America, or if that affects freedom, this esoteric concept that Thomas 
Jefferson once talked about, so be it.
  We have the PAC community, BIPAC, the business PAC openly critical of 
Republican and Democratic Members that continue to fight against 
extending MFN, Most Favored Trade Nations Status to the Chinese. They 
claim that it shows that we are antibusiness.
  When I got elected here in 1994, I had never been involved in 
politics before. I decided it was time to get up off the couch and do 
something. But it seemed to me, before I got up here, that Members of 
Congress and administrations did not have to choose between freedom and 
finance, that we could somehow walk sort of that middle road. But it is 
not that way anymore. The President tells us. The BIPACs of the world 
tell us that it is all or nothing.
  You either completely engage with China, give them whatever they want 
on their terms, or else you are a dangerous knuckle dragging 
isolationist that just does not understand the economic and political 
realities at the end of the 20th Century. That argument is patently 
false.
  There was an editorial in the New York Times, an op ed last week that 
said as much. It is written by Robert Kagan and William Kristol. The 
headline said ``Stop Playing by China's Rules.'' Their editorial said 
the following: ``In defending his China policy, President Clinton says 
America faces historic choice: engage China as his Administration has 
done or isolate it. But that is a false choice.''
  As the op ed goes on to say, nobody is arguing that we isolate China. 
China is going to be one of the great powers in the 21st Century. We 
will share the world stage with the Chinese people until everyone that 
is living today has passed away and died. That is the political 
reality. That is the demographic reality.
  The 21st Century will not be the American century alone. It will be 
the American and Asian century. A power shift is happening, and we will 
be sharing the world stage, and we understand that.
  But the question is, do we join into this partnership by China's 
rules, or do we try to meet in the middle ground with them? What Kagan 
and Kristol conclude is the following: ``Mr. Clinton seems determined 
to cast his critics as backward-looking isolationists spoiling for a 
new cold war. In fact, the Clinton Administration's current policy 
invites Chinese adventurism abroad and repression at home. At the end 
of this bloody century, we all should have learned that appeasement, 
even when disguised as engagement, doesn't work.''
  How many people have read the history, or how many Americans still 
alive remember what happened in 1938 when Neville Chamberlain went to 
Munich, and he was so desperate to avoid war, so desperate to avoid any 
conflict with Adolph Hitler that he engaged in what was later termed an 
appeasement policy, a policy that Winston Churchill and his 
conservative allies aggressively fought against.

  But Chamberlain was dead-set against fighting Hitler because Hitler 
was too powerful. Britain was not ready for that type of a war. So he 
came back, after appeasing Hitler, talking about how he had found 
``peace for our time.''
  Of course Adolph Hitler, like the Chinese today, did not see 
appeasement as a show of strength, but rather a show of weakness. Soon 
after that, peace in our time ended with Hitler going into Austria, 
going into Poland and beginning the bloody, bloody Second World War.
  We cannot capitulate. If we continue to capitulate, BIPAC, Wall 
Street, and the other business leaders that are accusing us of 
isolation may make a short-term profit but, in the end, will pay the 
ultimate price.
  What do the Chinese leaders think of us for this appeasement policy 
we have been engaging? Let me read to you from yesterday's Investor's 
Business Daily, a quote from a U.S. official who was negotiating with 
the Chinese.
  It goes like this: ``In March 1996, China started lobbying missiles 
within 100 miles of Taiwan as a signal on the eve of the island's first 
democratic elections. The Clinton administration said nothing publicly 
at the time, even though the Chinese insulted U.S. officials when they 
privately promised a military reaction if Taiwan was attacked.''
  This is what the Chinese said after that threat, ``No, you won't. 
We've watched you in Somalia. We have watched you in Haiti. We have 
watched you in Bosnia and you don't have the will,'' a Chinese officer 
told U.S. negotiators. China has nuclear weapons, and ``you are not 
going to threaten us again, because, in the end, you care a lot more 
about Los Angeles than Taipei,'' a U.S. official recalled the Chinese 
officer saying.
  So they understand that we are a paper tiger. They understand that 
they can even threaten nuclear annihilation on Los Angeles, California 
and not face the consequences. Yet, silence is deafening from Wall 
Street. Silence is deafening from many in the PAC community. The 
silence is deafening from the halls of Congress and the administration.
  Why? The Dow is over 9,000. China is, after all, the next great 
export market. In the end, let us face it, the economy is strong in 
part because the prices on consumer goods are low.
  Why are they low? Because China provides us with what Americans would 
call slave labor. Their workers only make $30 a month. So they can make 
the items that we buy and wear very cheaply. This is an arrangement we 
do not want to fool around with.
  I guess it was brought home to me just how bad the situation is in 
China yesterday when I heard a speech by Bill Greider in the Capitol 
talking about a plant that he visited over in China. They talked about 
how they, the workers made $30 to $60 a month if they were productive.
  If they were not productive, he found out that they actually took 
money out

[[Page H5396]]

of this envelope at the end of the month if they were not doing as good 
a job. Greider said that sounds kind of inhumane, does it not? Only $60 
a month, and they still dock their pay.
  The foreman said, ``Well, it is better than what happened a couple of 
years ago.'' Greider said, ``Well, what is that?'' He said, ``Well, we 
lined them up on the wall and shot them,'' and told the story of how 
seven workers were not simply as productive as they should have been 
and were taken outside and shot.
  Wall Street, a lot of the business community, a lot of the lobbyists 
will tell you that does not exist. Yet, just about every credible 
journalist, whether it is the New York Times or the Washington Post, 
will tell you they have seen it with their own eyes, that it does 
exist.

                              {time}  1915

  A.M. Rosenthal better than anybody else over the past few years has 
documented human rights abuses.
  I had a lobbyist for an organization that I respect tell me with a 
straight face that there is no religious persecution in China, that 
there is no religious persecution in Tibet. That is a big lie.
  There is a song out that is called ``Novocain for the Soul.'' I think 
that is what 9,000 points on the Dow Jones Industrial has done. It has 
numbed us. It has numbed the soul of Americans to the grave injustices 
that are occurring across the globe. Maybe I am overreacting. Maybe we 
should not worry about it. Maybe America in the 21st century is not 
what America was in the 18th century. Maybe freedom, liberty and the 
things that Thomas Jefferson talked about and James Madison talked 
about does not matter. Maybe they are not relevant. But I tend to 
believe they are. I believe in such quaint notions as what Russell Kirk 
said. Kirk said, ``No matter the volume of its steel production, a 
nation which has disavowed principle is vanquished.''
  And Winston Churchill in the 1950s, talking about a similar shift in 
his country and in his party, a similar shift where old concepts of the 
Constitution and freedom were transplanted with commerce and simply 
commerce, had this to say:

       The old conservative party, with its religious convictions, 
     and constitutional principles, will disappear and a new party 
     will rise, perhaps like the Republican Party in the United 
     States, rigid, materialist and secular, whose opinions will 
     turn on tariffs and who will cause the lobbies to be crowded 
     with the touts of the protected industries.

  I hope that does not happen to our Republican Party. I hope we will 
have the courage to stand up and be counted where others sit down and 
simply shut up and are silenced because the lure of new prosperous 
markets are too inviting. But the question is up in the air right now 
on how we are going to respond. I must say we have not been responding 
as well over the past few years as I would have liked. I think what we 
not only in the Republican Party but like-minded people in the 
Democratic Party must fight for are the first principles that our 
Founding Fathers based this Constitution and this constitutional 
republic upon, concepts like freedom, concepts written in the 
Declaration of Independence when Jefferson helped pen that incredible 
phrase that ``we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are 
created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable 
rights, among those life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.''
  There is not a lot of ambiguity there. The belief was all men, not 
people in America, but all are endowed with certain unalienable rights. 
From where? According to the Declaration of Independence, from God. It 
is non-negotiable. It does not matter whether the Dow Jones is over 
9,000 or under 900. It does not matter if China is the next great 
export market or not. That we in America believe that all are created 
equal. And whether we are fighting for civil rights in Birmingham or 
Beijing, it is non-negotiable. Regrettably we have negotiated away too 
many of those freedoms and too many of those rights for a higher Dow 
Industrial and a lower price on consumer goods. Jefferson's idea that 
America was the last great hope for a dying world seems quaint 222 
years later. And Ronald Reagan's belief that America was to be a city 
shining brightly on the hill for all the world to see seems to be a 
belief that has been dimmed. In fact, right now there is an exhibit 
that almost seems quaint. Mr. Speaker, it is in the Library of Congress 
and it is called ``Religion and the Founding of the American 
Republic.'' It is right behind us, across the street, where the Library 
of Congress pulled together all the papers of our Founding Fathers when 
talking on the issue of religion. This is a summary of the exhibit, 
what the Library of Congress wrote in the chapter ``America as 
Religious Refuge, the 17th Century.'' It talks about how ``many of the 
North American colonies that eventually formed the United States of 
America were settled by men and women who in the face of European 
persecution refused to compromise passionately held religious 
convictions. The great majority left Europe to worship God in the way 
that they believed to be correct.''
  To worship in the way that they believed to be correct. Is that a 
notion that can be negotiated away in Tiananmen Square? Is that a 
notion that depends on how well the Dow Jones is doing? Is that a 
quaint notion that depends on whether we are talking about the next 
great export market? I do not think so. Again, that is a notion that is 
non-negotiable. For those on Wall Street, for those lobbyists on K 
Street, for those apologists on Main Street that want to turn a blind 
eye to oppression in China, I say facts are stubborn things. Facts are 
stubborn things.
  We cannot turn our eyes away from the world's ills, to the growing 
evidence of how China has aided in nuclear proliferation, how they gave 
nuclear secrets to Pakistan, to Libya and now possibly even to Iran. 
The results obviously are dangerous. Pakistan just exploded publicly 
several nuclear devices that now endangers all the world as a new 
nuclear arms race is escalating in Asia. The technology transfers that 
we heard about a month or two back, where the DOD themselves said, 
quote, America's national security has been jeopardized, has been 
compromised, because this administration gave technology to the Chinese 
that helped make their nuclear missiles more accurate towards America. 
The Pentagon said national security was jeopardized.
  Just today, there was testimony from a Pentagon aide who criticized 
Chinese policies. This is by John Diamond with the Associated Press:

       A veteran adviser with the Pentagon agency charged with 
     reviewing proposed exports testified today before a Senate 
     committee investigating whether the administration helped 
     China gain military capacity that should have been 
     restricted.
       Speaking in a hoarse whisper, he told the Senate 
     Governmental Affairs Committee how senior defense officials 
     glossed over concerns in the lower ranks that U.S. businesses 
     were being allowed to sell China and other countries 
     technology with military applications. Senior defense 
     officials sometimes instructed subordinates to soften or 
     reverse their recommendations that certain technology not be 
     exported, he said.
       That's happened on several occasions. Sometimes it happens 
     in your face and sometimes it happens when you're on vacation 
     and somebody tampers with your database under your name.

  In 1996, Leitner said, he returned from a 3-week vacation to find 
that his recommendation against the export of supercomputer technology 
to Russia had been rewritten to a neutral position. Although approval 
for the export eventually was denied, Russia later announced it had 
obtained the U.S.-built computers without an export license. The case 
now is under investigation.

  We heard reports in this House in an investigating committee that 
people that were charged with stopping military technology from being 
transferred to China would make recommendations not to export that 
technology to China and they would then be pressured to change their 
recommendations. We find out now that the President asked the Secretary 
of State to allow these technology transfers. The Secretary of State 
said no, this damages America's national security in its relationship 
with China. The President asked the CIA. They said no. The President 
asked the National Security Council. They said no. In fact, they 
continued shopping to try to find somebody that would approve this 
technology transfer.

  Finally they went to the right department. They asked the Department 
of Commerce, who said, ``Sure, go ahead, it's great for business.'' 
Now,

[[Page H5397]]

the heck with the national security. It does not matter what our 
Secretary of State says. But go ahead and send it to Commerce. And now 
we find out this past week that the Commerce Department allowed 
technology transfers without telling other agencies about what was 
going on. Because, we see again, national security recently has taken a 
back seat to finance, to quick profits, and it is dangerous, 
extraordinarily dangerous.
  The question is, with nuclear proliferation exploding across the 
globe because of China and because of our lack of response to China, 
with technology transfers that our own Pentagon has said compromises 
national security continuing to move forward, with human rights 
violations that are continuing in China as reported by the New York 
Times, the Washington Post, Newsweek, Time and just about every other 
major news outlet, with these human rights abuses continuing, what can 
be done when Wall Street, when official Washington, and when too many 
other people across the country are simply not paying attention, 
turning a blind eye to it or engaging in this conspiracy of silence. 
What can be done to make a difference?
  I am at times cynical, but I do believe that we can make a big 
difference. I believe that we can fight the good fight, and I think 
that if people will start speaking out on this floor and speaking out, 
Republicans and Democrats alike, that we have a chance the next time 
MFN is debated to talk about human rights and talk about technology 
transfers, to talk about nuclear proliferation and maybe even make a 
difference.
  Bobby Kennedy back in 1966 went to Johannesburg and at the time he 
was talking about ending apartheid. A lot of people thought that it was 
a mission that could not be done, thought it was too difficult, thought 
the walls of oppression would continue there. But Bobby Kennedy 
continued the fight. Even though he was killed in 1968, 15 years later, 
many of the things that he talked about in that speech in Johannesburg 
came true.
  In talking about ending apartheid, this is what Robert Kennedy said:
       It is a revolutionary world that we live in. It is young 
     people who must take the lead. We have had thrust upon us a 
     greater burden of responsibility than any generation that has 
     ever lived.
       ``There is,'' said an Italian philosopher, ``nothing more 
     difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more 
     uncertain in its success than to take the lead in the 
     introduction of a new order of things.''
       There is the belief there is nothing one man or one woman 
     can do against the enormous array of the world's ills, 
     against misery and ignorance, injustice and violence. Yet 
     many of the world's great movements, of thought and action, 
     have flowed from the work of a single man or woman.
       It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief 
     that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for 
     an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes 
     out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, 
     and crossing each other from a million different centers of 
     energy and daring those ripples build a current which can 
     sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.

                              {time}  1930

  It is my prayer tonight, with the President halfway across the world 
in Beijing, that those who respect and honor human rights in China, 
those who respect and honor human rights in Europe, those who respect 
and honor human rights in this country will start acting in ways that 
will strike out against injustice and send forth ripples of hope and 
that together, today, we can begin a movement that will help end the 
human rights abuses in China and Tibet and across the world and help 
America reconnect with its proud and noble past.

                          ____________________