[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 18 (Tuesday, February 2, 1999)]
[House]
[Pages H326-H332]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              CHINA POLICY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from California (Mr. Rohrabacher) is recognized for 60 
minutes.
  Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, this is an appropriate evening for me 
to be presenting what I have to say, whereas we have just heard about 
the changes in American defense that have taken place, some alarming 
changes that have taken place over these last 10 years, and in fact 
since 1985 there has been a dramatic decline in America's military 
power. At the same time, while America has been permitting its own 
military power to go astray or to be in decline, there have been noises 
being heard from across the pond, from across the Pacific Ocean, and 
those noises, unfortunately, are not the sound of a peaceful neighbor, 
but instead the sound of a neighbor that seems to be, instead of 
decreasing its military power and concentrating on peace and 
prosperity, instead seems to be the sound of a neighbor that is 
building a massively repressive military regime that threatens the 
United States and threatens our security, especially when we are 
considering the fact that America is no longer the military power it 
once was.
  After 10 years in Congress, I find myself to be a senior member on 
two very powerful committees, the Committee on Science where I am the 
chairman of the Subcommittee on Space Aeronautics, and the Committee on 
International Relations where I sit on both the committee dealing with 
export policy as well as the subcommittee dealing with Asian policy. 
Thus, I find myself playing a major role in the trade and technology 
transfer issues concerning communist China. I would like to focus on 
China policy this evening, and I thought that an appropriate lead-in 
was something that just happened to me recently in my own congressional 
district.
  It was only a short while ago that I received a call in my office 
that the local Chamber of Commerce, with the support of the local city 
government, was planning to have a lunch co-hosted by the city and the 
Chamber of Commerce honoring the Consul General of the People's 
Republic of China, and I was asked whether or not I would be willing to 
present a certificate or a key to the city or some kind of greeting to 
this representative of the communist Chinese regime. And I felt at that 
time that even in my own congressional district at the time, with all 
the time and effort that I have put in to describing what is going on 
in Asia, even the people in my own congressional district did not 
understand the magnitude of the threat posed by this vicious 
dictatorship on the mainland of China.
  In fact, I was called by Mayor Green when I expressed my disapproval 
of this luncheon honoring this representative of the Communist Chinese 
government. Mayor Green of Huntington Beach asked me, well, what is 
your opposition all about, and after I explained it to him, he 
understood why I was opposing this, and he said: But how should we 
treat officials from the communist Chinese government? I mean, after 
all, they are a government. How should we react to this? How should we 
act towards them, if not having this type of luncheon?
  And I said, Mayor, you should treat the representatives of the 
Chinese communist government the same way that you would treat a 
representative of Adolph Hitler's Nazi regime in 1938. And if you would 
feel comfortable having a Nazi representing Adolf Hitler as a guest of 
honor, being honored by your city and Chamber of Commerce back in 1938, 
if you thought that would be an appropriate thing, well, then you would 
feel that it was appropriate that that is the way we honor a 
representative today of the world's worst human rights abuser, the 
communist regime in Beijing.

[[Page H327]]

  Well, that luncheon was canceled, and I am very grateful that the 
members of the local city government and Chamber of Commerce listened 
to what I had to say because I am sure that the communist Chinese would 
have used it as a propaganda tool to say that, see, even the American 
people in Congressman Rohrabacher's own district do not go along with 
him.
  Well, as soon as they knew the facts, the people of my district were 
very quick to respond, and I think what is vitally important is for the 
American people to know the facts; for them to know, number one, that 
we are not the same powerful military force that we were 10-15 years 
ago and that, number two, that there is a growing threat to world peace 
and a growing threat to our own national security on the other side of 
the Pacific.
  During the Reagan years I worked as a speech writer while President 
Reagan was President, and I worked for him for 7 years, and during that 
time period I remember when he went to China. In fact, I remember 
working on his speech in which we offered American know-how to the 
Chinese if they would agree to have their goals as being peace and 
liberalization of their country. And at that time that made sense, and 
in fact President Reagan's approach was a positive approach, as Ronald 
Reagan was known, and it was something to try to give them the 
incentive to go in the right direction. When I say ``they'' I am 
referring to the leadership of the Communist Party that controls the 
government of China.
  During that time period when I worked at the White House, a young 
Chinese exchange student walked into my office, and what was 
fascinating, that it was on a Saturday, and I was working there on 
Saturday afternoon, and almost no one was in the Executive Office 
Building. By the way, the Executive Office Building is that building 
right next to the White House where the President's top national 
security and economic advisers and policy advisers work. When most 
people say they work in the White House, they really work right next 
door in the Old Executive Office Building.
  So the most sensitive area of our government, there a Chinese student 
walked in unaccompanied and just walked right into my office as I was 
working on his speech, and he explained to me that he had met one of 
the researchers in my department and that she had invited him to lunch 
and that he was coming there to meet this researcher. And he had been 
checked in through the security, and again without being escorted 
whatsoever he was walking by himself through the very heart of 
America's decision-making process at the Old Executive Office Building. 
I did not find that to be unusual at all because we were at that time 
convinced that China would never go back, that China had already 
evolved to a point that it would never be a threat to freedom, and that 
in fact the people of China were well on the way to a bright and 
prosperous and democratic future.

                              {time}  1945

  During the Cold War, of course, is when we started this evolution 
towards democracy in China, and it was right for President Nixon and 
the other presidents who followed the policy laid down by Nixon to play 
China off against Russia during a time when Russia threatened the 
entire world, when Russia's communist regime was arming itself to the 
teeth, sponsoring military actions and covert operations against the 
democratic governments all over the world.
  Nixon, yes, played China against Russia in a way that permitted the 
western democracies to have the leverage they needed, the leverage they 
needed in the western democracies to prevent war and to prevent the 
dictatorships, the communist dictatorships of the world, from having 
the leverage they needed to win the day and to win the battle of the 
Cold War and to put us in jeopardy.
  So we did. And during this time period, when we were playing China 
off against Russia, we developed a new relationship with China. And as 
part of that relationship, a democracy movement was building. This was 
what we saw when that young Chinese student was walking right through 
that building a few years later in the early 1980s. He represented a 
new China, the new potential for freedom and peace in China. And 
through the Reagan years, although the leadership of China remained 
tyrannical, just as it was under Nixon, there was a growing democracy 
movement that was undermining the tyranny that controlled the mainland 
of China, and it was an ever-increasingly powerful democracy movement, 
but it was invisible.
  All of a sudden it became visible when, in Tiananmen Square, tens of 
thousands, perhaps even more, Chinese people, activists, democracy 
activists, gathered to tell the world that they were committed to 
democratic reform, and there, before the world to see and all of the 
national and international media, we could see that there was a 
democratic movement in China that gave us all hope, and it was a 
surprise to us and actually it was a surprise to the communist 
leadership.
  But by then Ronald Reagan was no longer the President of the United 
States. George Bush was President of the United States, and, unlike 
Ronald Reagan, President Bush did not believe that the promotion of 
democracy and freedom was on the highest level of priority for the 
United States Government. In fact, George Bush's administration, 
instead of talking about freedom and democracy, spent most of its time 
talking about stability and trying to build a new world order.
  What that led the communist Chinese to believe was that if they came 
down hard on the democracy movement in Tiananmen Square, that this 
administration, meaning the George Bush administration, would go along, 
because they were interested in stability.
  In fact, that is what happened. There was a massacre of the democracy 
movement in Tiananmen Square. Thousands of people lost their lives, and 
then throughout China there was a great leap backwards, where people 
who believed in democracy, people who believed in religious expression 
and different various religions, people who were bringing China into a 
new era, were arrested throughout that country and thrown into a logi 
prison system that was similar to the gulag archipelago that the 
Russian people were thrown into by their communist bosses.
  In a very short period of time, the positive and pro-democratic and 
pro-peaceful future of China was turned around dramatically, and 
instead, the picture of China controlled by thugs and goons, putting 
their boot in the face of the people of China forever, was the vision 
that emerged.
  This, of course, happened very quickly, because I think there was 
something that was happening that we did not really fully appreciate 
that was happening in the United States at the same time that the 
democracy movement was gaining strength in China. You see, while we had 
this special relationship with China, and thus there was a democracy 
movement developing there, there was another movement developing in the 
United States that could be traced, its origins, back to that same 
relationship that we are talking about.
  American billionaires and would-be billionaires were using their 
considerable leverage on the United States Government to ensure that 
they had a policy, that we had a policy, in dealing with China, that 
would permit them to exploit what was little more than slave labor in 
China.
  American business interests, powerful American business interests, 
wanted to go there and wanted to make a quick profit, and they could 
care less about the other implications of doing business within a 
regime that was so tyrannical and so militaristic.
  Of course, the businessmen who were doing this described their 
motives in the best possible ways. In fact, they claimed that the China 
market was so large and potentially so valuable that it would be a sin 
against the American people to let America's competitors get that 
business, when they should be the ones getting the business, as if 
those American business interests really had the interest of freedom 
and democracy or even the interest of the American people at heart.
  Well, those big corporations were wrong, or perhaps they were just 
lying, because perhaps they did not care anyway. That remains to be 
seen. Perhaps some of the people who have invested in China care deeply 
about the Chinese

[[Page H328]]

people. Frankly, there have been hundreds of businessmen that I have 
spoken to on this issue, and while they claim that the more contacts 
they have, business contacts, with China, will make China more liberal, 
not one of them seems to have ever spoken about human rights to any of 
the local government officials in those areas in which their own 
factories are located.
  Well, all we have to do is look at the record. Over these last ten 
years, since the Tiananmen Square massacre especially, repression has 
increased, even though investment in China has gone along at a very 
brisk rate. So no matter how much money our businessmen are putting 
into China, the repression continues, and it has gotten worse. In fact, 
there was a democracy movement at one point, and now all the democrats 
are in jail or they have been executed or they have been forced into 
exile, and there is not a viable democracy movement today.
  So has this, our trade, really helped stimulate more democracy? No. 
In fact, the Chinese dictators have seen our investment as evidence 
that Americans really do not believe in freedom, do not believe in 
democracy, do not even believe in their Christian principles or other 
religious principles enough to side with the religious people of China 
who are being persecuted.
  Let us note this at this moment: China, although we have been told is 
this vast market, little Taiwan, with 20 million people, little Taiwan 
buys twice as much from the United States as does all the billion, over 
1 billion people, perhaps 1.5 billion people, on the mainland of China.
  Is this such a vast market? Well, one of the reasons, of course, that 
vast market is not being exploited is that there is a government policy 
by the United States to permit the communist Chinese regime to charge a 
tariff on any American products being sold in Communist China that is 
far greater than any of the tariffs we charge on their goods that are 
flooding into our markets.

  Thus, many of our goods that we would like to see sell in China to 
their consumers are charged 30 and 40 percent tariffs, while we only 
charge them 3 or 4 percent tariffs, and they flood our markets with 
shoes and commercial items and consumer items that have put many 
American businesses out of business.
  No, my theory is when looking at what has been going on is the big 
businessmen who are investing in China really do not care about 
America's, about America's, future share in the Chinese market. What 
they care about is the 25 percent quick profit that they themselves 
will make by investing in China today, and they have done so in these 
investments over these last few years with not one concern at all of 
the human rights abuses, nor any concern about the American people. In 
fact, as I say, much of this investment has been done at the expense of 
the American people and the expense of people who are working and 
providing goods and services here.
  In fact, a large number of the sales that China is making here can be 
attributed to U.S. companies that have built manufacturing units in 
China in order to use the Chinese, that have no environmental rules, no 
labor legislation. In fact, the Chinese laborers have none of the 
rights of the American laborers, and actually they receive a pittance 
many times as compensation. So, a lot of times our people, they say we 
have to invest in China in order to make sure that America can sell its 
goods. In reality, what they are doing is they go to China and set up a 
manufacturing unit and then sell those goods back to the United States.
  If a refrigerator company would like to sell a refrigerator in China, 
no, they go there and set up a refrigerator manufacturing company and 
sell the refrigerators not to the Chinese, but back to the people of 
the United States, taking full advantage of the slave labor in China.
  In fact, I have heard that people who believe in certain religious 
faiths, Christians and others, who have not joined the official church 
in China, sometimes have been dragged out kicking and screaming, out of 
certain factories, even factories owned by Americans, and yet the 
American employers have done nothing to prevent these people from being 
arrested because they belong to a church that is not registered by the 
state.
  Yes, there are some companies, Boeing Company, for example, is a 
company that is the largest employer in my district, and I respect the 
fact that they want to sell airplanes. As I say, most of the time when 
people are talking about selling, they are not really talking about 
selling the product. A lot of times they are talking about setting up a 
manufacturing unit.
  In Boeing's case, they actually do sell some airplanes. But along 
with these deals to sell airplanes, how many of us realize that part of 
the deal is that Boeing will be setting up manufacturing units in 
China, so after a given period of time, in dealing with enough American 
aerospace firms, they will have the capability of manufacturing 
airplanes and aerospace technology on par with the United States.
  Yes, there is a quick profit to be made by a sale this year or next 
year, but if we are doing that by setting up manufacturing units which 
will permit the communist Chinese to outcompete our own aerospace 
workers and put them out of work five years down the road, who is to 
profit? The communist Chinese will benefit from that, and the American 
people, in the long run, will lose.
  Well, we have a fight every year here in Congress over most-favored-
nation status for the communist Chinese, and in fact we have just 
passed a rule today that is changing that to say, what is the trading 
status they want to change it to, it is the standard trading status, or 
something. Normal trading relations, that is it. They want to change 
most-favored-nation status to most normal trading relations. I did 
oppose most-favored-nation trading status for China, and I oppose 
normal trading relations for China, because by passing this 
classification of China, we are saying that the communist Chinese will 
be treated just as we treat Belgium or Italy or Canada in terms of our 
trading relations.
  No, if we have free trade with other people, free trade should be 
between free people, not between a dictatorship that manipulates it on 
one end and free people who permit their billionaires to invest with no 
concern about the national security implications to our country or the 
long-term national economic interests of our country. So I would be 
opposed to normal trade relations.
  Also there is the side benefit that the communist get, by the way, as 
well as the billionaires who want to invest in China get, by having 
normal trade relations. And that is what this issue really is all 
about. It is hard fought on this floor of the House every year, and you 
will hear speech after speech saying we cannot isolate China. We have 
to sell our products. We have to engage in commerce with China.

                              {time}  2000

  No one is talking about isolating China, and no one is talking about 
preventing these businessmen from selling whatever they want to sell to 
China, except perhaps some very sophisticated military equipment, which 
I will discuss in a few moments. But by and large, American companies, 
or no one who opposes Most Favored Nation status or normal trading 
relations with China are opposed to them selling these things, and they 
will not have anything to prevent them from selling these things.
  However, with normal trading relations just like we have with the 
other democratic countries, these large financial interests, these 
billionaires who want to seek ever more money with no concern about the 
effect that it has on jobs in the United States, are then subsidizing, 
they are eligible for subsidies by the American taxpayer. By having 
normal trade relations, we then have set up a situation where the 
Export-Import Bank, or the World Bank or OPEC or any number of other 
financial entities paid for by the American taxpayers, can provide a 
subsidy or a loan guarantee or a loan at a lower interest rate for 
their investments in communist China.
  Now, what does that mean? That means working people in the United 
States are being taxed and their money is being given to a very wealthy 
interest in order for that interest, to guarantee that interest's 
investment in a dictatorship, in order to use slave labor to export 
goods to the United States to put our own people out of work. What

[[Page H329]]

we have done is we have made it more attractive to invest in a hostile 
dictatorship than to invest in our own country.
  We actually can say businessmen can think about earning a large 
profit margin and have their investment guaranteed by the American 
taxpayer. That is what normal trade relations is all about. That is 
what Most Favored Nation status has really been about. Because these 
businessmen could still, if they manufacture a product here, there is 
no one stopping it. This has been an effort to confuse the American 
people; their arguments have been designed to confuse and to lie to the 
American people, so that they do not realize that in reality their own 
money is being used against them.
  This whole system, to be fair, was in place before Bill Clinton 
became President of the United States. And I remember when he first ran 
for President, he accused George Bush of kowtowing to the communist 
Chinese dictators. And President Clinton, when he became President 
after he won the election, just like in so many of the other things 
that he has done as President of the United States, has gone in exactly 
the opposite direction than what he promised the American people when 
he ran.
  In fact, this administration's policies on human rights and democracy 
have been a catastrophe that has been an administration with the worst 
human rights record in the history of this country. People all over the 
world who look to us and believe that the United States stood for 
democracy and freedom have now lost hope, because they see an 
administration that wraps its arms around not just the communist 
Chinese, but just about every vicious dictatorship in the world.
  Ronald Reagan understood that there is a relationship between peace 
and freedom. He understood that unless we fight for democracy and stand 
firm for our principles of freedom, that we will not have peace, 
because there is a symmetry in this world in which economic freedom and 
political freedom and peace are all connected. And there is a price to 
pay, there is a price to pay when one wraps his arms around criminals 
or when a country wraps its arms around a vicious dictatorship like 
that in China, which is the world's worst human rights abuser.
  The American people are just now beginning to learn the truth about 
the risks of treating a vicious dictatorship in the same way that we 
treat a democratic nation. They are beginning to learn the truth about 
the risks that we have been taking by having normal trade relations or 
Most Favored Nation trading status with China, and treating them the 
same way we would treat the English or the Italians or the Austrians. 
Let me put it this way. In those other democratic countries, they are 
ruled by people who are elected and who respect the rights of 
individuals, of their own citizens.
  Those people who run these dictatorships around the world hate the 
United States. These gangsters that murder their own people and have 
aggressive goals, and they look with an eye towards the resources and 
the land of their neighbors, these people who suppress people for their 
religion, these people who would murder someone for speaking up against 
them, these gangster regimes hate the United States and hate the people 
of the United States because they know that we are the only thing that 
stands between them and being secure in their power. Because they know 
it is the goodwill of the people of the United States of America that 
has saved this world in this century twice during the world wars, and 
then during the Cold War, from tyranny and totalitarianism, and it was 
only the strength and courage of the American people and our 
determination to live up to the ideals that were set forth by our 
Founding Fathers, it was only that commitment that prevented monsters 
like they are now from achieving total power on this planet. The 
Hitlers and the Stalins are still in power, but they are in power in 
China and in others of these little petty dictatorships around the 
world, and they hate us, and they know that we are what stands between 
them and having a secure hold on power in their own country and their 
ability to bully their neighbors.
  President Clinton thinks he is trying to make friends with these 
people in Beijing by calling them, wrapping his arms around them, 
calling them our strategic partners, saying that the United States 
Government, the people of the United States, the most freedom-loving 
people in the world, people who take their religion seriously but 
believe in freedom of religion for all people, that we are strategic 
partners with the world's leading abuser of human rights, a regime that 
has been manipulating the trade between us so that it has tens of 
billions of dollars every year to increase their military power and 
their military might.
  Well, as they do increase their military power and President Clinton 
calls them our strategic partners, one must wonder whom are we the 
strategic partners against? Are we in partners against the 
democratically elected government in Taiwan, or how about the 
democratically elected government in Japan, or how about the 
democratically elected government in the Philippines, or how about 
South Korea? What do the people who live in these democracies think 
when they see the President of the United States calling our 
relationship a strategic partnership with this militaristic regime that 
opposes their own people so thoroughly?
  Even while President Clinton was in China the last time, the Chinese 
dictators are so cynical that they were testing a new rocket engine 
that they are trying to bring out and deploy in a new weapons system, 
and this new rocket engine in this weapons system is designed for one 
thing. It is to kill Americans, kill American military personnel and 
perhaps even put our country in jeopardy.

  And when they were testing this rocket engine while President Clinton 
was there, he knew about it, he had read the cables. His National 
Security Council had read the cables. They knew the intelligence 
information, and guess what? President Clinton did not bother to bring 
it up to the Chinese. It just did not come up in the conversation. Do 
you think that the strong-arms and tough guys and the gangsters who run 
communist China respect President Clinton, or are they more likely to 
be friends of us, friends of us because he did not bring it up, he did 
not embarrass them by bringing it up in a conversation?
  Mr. Speaker, when we do not mention the genocide in Tibet or the 
threats against Taiwan because it was having free elections, or the 
arrest of Christians and the repression of a free church, forcing 
everybody to register in a communist-recognized church; when one does 
not bring up a free press or forced abortions, one should not be 
surprised that the communists who control China do not take our calls 
for human rights seriously. And when they do not take us seriously, we 
should not be surprised to find out that they are building their 
military forces in a way that threatens the United States and that they 
are beginning to commit acts of aggression against their neighbors. 
That should not surprise us at all.
  This hug-a-Nazi-and-make-him-a-liberal strategy of the Clinton 
Administration is doomed to failure just as it was when Neville 
Chamberlain and those people in the 1930s confronted that threat to 
world peace and freedom.
  President Clinton of course has gone beyond that. He is not just 
hugging the communist Chinese dictators, he is encouraging American 
corporations to do business. It is this administration's policy that 
taxpayer money be used as a guarantee for businessmen who will invest 
in China. In fact, it was President Clinton's administration that 
encouraged even our aerospace companies to go in and do business in 
communist China. Of course, there is evidence that during the last 
election some of these companies were also major contributors to 
President Clinton. In fact, Bernie Schwartz was the biggest contributor 
to President Clinton's campaign, and he also of course was the head of 
Loral Corporation, which is now accused of sending missile and other 
technology, weapons technology secrets to the communist Chinese who 
will now use that information, if they have it, which we know they do, 
to threaten the United States and to threaten the lives of the American 
people.
  So, but one cannot determine, was it the aerospace companies, some of 
these big corporations pushing Clinton, or was it Clinton pushing them?

[[Page H330]]

  The Chinese have invested money in American elections, not to buy 
perhaps opinion but at least to meet people and to have friends in high 
places. We all remember that the communist Chinese provided certain 
amounts of money, and we still do not know if that money was the money 
that was given to Vice President Gore when he went to that Chinese 
monastery, all of those Buddhist monks out there on the West Coast who 
had all of those thousands of dollars to donate. Even though they had 
been living a life of poverty all through the years, they just had 
those checks that they gave to the President's reelection effort. Where 
did that money come from? Did we ever learn where that money came from?
  The bottom line is there has been a lot of shenanigans going on, but 
what is worse is the fact that weapons technology that was developed 
and paid for by the American taxpayer to help us preserve the peace has 
made its way into the hands of a regime that hates the people of the 
United States and hates everything that we stand for as a Nation. And 
now they have technology for weapons of mass destruction paid for by 
the American taxpayer that has been put into their hands.
  Now, I am proud to have played a role in exposing this to the 
American people. It was about a year ago when I first made my first 
speech on this issue. Because earlier than that, as chairman of the 
Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics, I had actually gone to a meeting 
of aerospace workers and engineers, and one of them was describing how 
he was involved in upgrading the capabilities and the efficiency of 
communist Chinese rockets in order to lift off satellites, American 
satellites.
  I said, wait a minute, wait a minute. You are telling me that you are 
using American technology, your know-how, and you are improving the 
capabilities of these rockets? He says, Congressman, they do not even 
have the right stage separation technology and they will blow up 
shortly after lift-off, and they do not even have the capability in 
some of these rockets to carry more than one payload. I said, wait a 
minute. A communist Chinese rocket blowing up, that is a very good 
thing.

                              {time}  2015

  He says, ``Don't worry, Congressman. You are thinking about the 
security implications.'' I said, ``Yes. Yes, I am. I am worried about 
the security implications of American technology upgrading the 
capability of Communist Chinese rockets.'' He says, ``Don't worry. The 
White House has given us waivers. This is part of an overall program 
that the White House has totally approved of.''
  That is when the alarm bells started going off. Who is watching the 
watchdogs? I talked about this. I did my own investigation. I verified 
what this engineer had told me. I talked to subcontractors and major 
contractors and major aerospace companies.
  In just a very short time I was able to confirm that some of our 
aerospace giants had used the technology that we had made available to 
them in a way that enables the Communist Chinese to have a better 
chance to effectively drop nuclear weapons in the United States of 
America and to upgrade their weapons systems, putting American military 
personnel at risk. It was enough to knock the wind right out of my 
lungs.
  While I was doing this, the New York Times was also involved in an 
investigation, an investigation that turned up the same type of 
information that I was coming up with. I tried to alert people. All 
over this body I was talking to chairmen and people. I tried to tell 
Newt, but things were very confused and things were going fast. I told 
Newt several times.
  Finally I remember when I got his attention, because Newt was a man 
of history. I said, you know, Newt, this is really the worst betrayal 
of America's security interests since the Rosenbergs. He turned to me 
and said, what did you say? I said, yes, the Communist Chinese, people 
who hate us, now have the ability, a greater ability to incinerate 
millions of Americans, and it is due to American technology.
  He turned to his aide right over there in that corner, I will never 
forget, and he said, is Dana right? His aide said, yes, there are some 
reports out that what Dana is saying is accurate. And Newt immediately 
called together the leadership of the Committee on National Security, 
the Committee on International Relations, the Committee on Science, and 
the Committee on Intelligence, and the gentleman from California (Mr. 
Chris Cox) was assigned, after a long discussion. The gentleman from 
California (Mr. Chris Cox), a man who was one of top legal counsel to 
President Reagan, was assigned to head up a select committee to find 
the details about this transfer of technology to the Communist Chinese.
  While I have not read the Cox committee report because it is labeled 
top secret, and I wanted to be able to speak freely on this issue, but 
those who have read it, and the gentleman from California, (Mr. Cox), 
in his summary, which is not a classified summary, indicates that the 
charges that I have made against certain American aerospace companies 
have been verified, and that there has been a sustained and systematic 
effort by the Communist Chinese to get their hands on American weapons 
technology, especially the technology of weapons of mass destruction.
  During the Reagan and Bush years the Communist Chinese stole this 
technology. They stole it because we were trying to operate with them 
on a friendly basis. During the Clinton years this technology has been 
up for sale, up for sale, and the Clinton administration has overseen 
the transfer of American technology through these large aerospace 
companies. That means that American citizens by the millions could lose 
their lives in a future confrontation with the Communist Chinese.
  As I say, it is perhaps the worst betrayal of American interests that 
I have ever seen in my lifetime. The Cox committee report verifies 
that, but the American people are not being permitted to see the Cox 
committee report.
  This is kind of a funny situation, because the Chinese know what 
information they stole from us. Now our government knows what 
information they stole from us. The only people who do not know the 
details about the technology that they have paid for to protect their 
interests, now being used by a vicious dictatorship to threaten the 
American people, the only ones who do not know about that are the 
American people themselves, because this report is being kept under 
wraps, except it is, of course, being exploited by this administration, 
which I will go into in a few moments.
  In the meantime, as the Communist Chinese ability to fight and kill 
Americans is increased, they have become more and more belligerent, 
more and more tyrannical, more and more aggressive toward their 
neighbors. Whether we are talking about the Spratly Islands, where they 
have been bullying their neighbors, or in Tibet, where they are 
committing genocide against the people of Tibet, or in Burma, where 
they are the godfathers of that vicious dictatorship that holds the 
whole population of Burma in a grip, in a dictatorial grip, or the 
helping hands they are giving to other anti-western dictatorships 
throughout the world, these are things that are happening now because 
the Chinese have lost all respect, the Communist Chinese have lost all 
respect for us, because they know that we do not care about a thing 
that we say, that it is just phony baloney when we talk about human 
rights, because this administration has done nothing to prevent the 
flow of weapons technology, and in fact has done nothing to prevent the 
billions of dollars that they have left over from this unfair trade 
relationship, which we have permitted them.
  Not only have we permitted them to have an unfair trade relationship, 
we have subsidized this unfair trade relationship, giving them tens of 
millions of dollars to upgrade their military capabilities. What is the 
solution? There is a solution. This is as serious as anything we have 
confronted as a Nation, and we need to focus on it.
  First of all, we must not treat the Communist Chinese regime as if 
they are a friendly regime. We must not treat them as normal trading 
partners like we would Italy, Belgium, or the Netherlands. We must 
treat them as a potential enemy of the people of the United States. 
They have earned that with the repression and murder that they have 
brought down on their own

[[Page H331]]

people, much less the aggression they are committing against their 
neighbors. That is number one.
  We must classify them and understand what they are, and we should 
not, we should not in any way subsidize them, either through technology 
transfers or through an unfair trading relationship, or through Export-
Import Bank guarantees to businessmen who would set up factories in 
Communist China.
  We must support the freedom elements in China itself. Radio-Free 
Asia, the National Endowment for Democracy, we must support these 
people in every way we can, support those who are struggling for 
democracy in this vicious dictatorship, because they are the ones that 
will free the world from this terror as they themselves free themselves 
from oppression of the Beijing regime.
  It is only when the people of China who love freedom and love 
democracy and love the United States, I might add, because they are our 
brothers and sisters in freedom and democracy, when they ascend to 
their rightful place as a representative government, they will no 
longer be a threat to the United States, because the people of China 
are not our enemy, it is the dictatorship in China that is.

  Finally, we must insist, and I hope every one of my colleagues and 
everyone who may be reading this or listening insists that the Cox 
report be made public. They should write and call their congressman and 
say that, why are the American people being left in the dark? The Cox 
report on Communist China must be made public so we can know what the 
Chinese have and what they have been able to steal from us, and what 
role American companies have played in preparing the Communist Chinese 
to kill Americans.
  I come to the floor tonight to inform my colleagues and to inform the 
American people, and perhaps to mobilize them. I personally witnessed 
some things, by the way, that underscore the very points that I have 
been making.
  In a recent fact-finding trip to Asia I overflew the Spratly Islands, 
and I could see that there, on Mischief Reef, a small sort of island 
like an atoll, because at low tide it is above water but at high tide 
it is below water, but it is an atoll about 150 miles from the 
Philippines, a country that is a democratic country that has very 
little defense. They are trying to spend their money on improving the 
life of their people.
  But that little island or reef, that lagoon situation 150 miles from 
the Philippines, is over 800 miles from China, and the Communist 
Chinese are trying to bully the Philippines and the other nations of 
the Pacific into letting them, and not letting them but in acquiescing 
to them, in giving in to them and giving in to their claim that this is 
their territory.
  I flew in an old C-130, a Philippine Air Force plane. As we went 
through the clouds and were heading towards this reef 150 miles off the 
Philippine mainland, as the clouds parted right above the reef, what 
did we see but three Chinese warships perched in this lagoon, armed to 
the teeth, helicopter decks there.
  And what else did we see nearby but scores of Chinese workers who 
were so fervently constructing a concrete military outpost on this reef 
that even as we flew over, their acetylene torches continued to build 
this fortification on that reef.
  Last week the Philippine military command called this Chinese buildup 
the greatest threat to the Philippines and America's interest in Asia 
since World War II. The Chinese are committing acts of aggression. They 
are willing to bully their neighbors. They are willing to murder their 
own people.
  This chain of islands, this chain of islands that we are talking 
about, the Spratly Islands, and some, as I say, are under water at low 
tide, serve and will serve as bases for the Chinese communists. They 
will be like stationary aircraft carriers and helicopter aircraft 
carriers that will threaten the most important strategic areas, trading 
areas, and trading routes in the world.
  Now we understand that the Chinese have an anti-ship missile that can 
be fired from the helicopters that will be stationed on these island 
bases. This missile that can be fired is a supersonic cruise-like 
missile, the SSN-22, the Sunburn missile they have achieved from 
Russia.
  These missiles were developed specifically by the Russians to destroy 
American aircraft carriers and Aegis cruisers. They are essential to a 
sea-based antimissile system, the Aegis cruisers. Yet, if we have any 
type of antimissile system, they will be vulnerable now to the 
Communist Chinese and their Sunburn missiles that they may be able to 
fire and probably are setting up bases for deep into the Pacific Ocean, 
800 miles off their own shore; in fact, right off the Philippine coast.
  This is a threat to the United States as well as to the people of the 
Philippines and the people of the Pacific. A large hunk of the world's 
trade goes right through the straits between these islands and the 
Communist Chinese mainland.
  Also to highlight what I am saying, and also to highlight why an 
antimissile defense system is so vital for the United States and our 
allies in the Pacific, in early December while I was in the region the 
Communist Chinese launched a mock missile attack exercise against 
Taiwan.
  During this exercise, for the first time the Chinese targeted U.S. 
military bases in Japan, in Okinawa, and South Korea. We know what they 
targeted. We know what their game plan was. The game plan was to put 
their finger on American bases to kill tens of thousands of Americans, 
and they have also now the ability to use these bases in the Spratlys, 
and these missiles that the Russians have sold them, to kill tens of 
thousands of American sailors.
  These bases that they have targeted for the first time, these are 
bases that are essential for the defense of Taiwan and essential for 
the peacekeeping in that whole region.
  Later this week when the Pentagon releases its congressionally-
mandated report on the Chinese missile threat to the region, it will 
become public knowledge that China is in the midst of a massive buildup 
of ballistic missiles that are intended to overwhelm Taiwan and 
American military outposts in the Pacific.
  Ironically, the Chinese military has built its first military 
communication station in the South Pacific. Their first military 
communications station is located on the atoll of Tarawa. It is there 
where thousands of American marines perished, battling to turn the tide 
of Japanese militarism during World War II.
  Mr. Speaker, the Pentagon has confirmed what I revealed on this floor 
last year, that China, with the help of U.S. corporations, has 
modernized its growing nuclear missile force so it can now strike at 
the continental United States from the mainland of China.

                              {time}  1630

  American people by the millions, our neighborhoods, our peoples are 
at great risk because American technology has been transferred to the 
Communist Chinese. It is still not too late, however, to defang this 
emerging dragon before it is ready to strike. But we must begin the 
process, and we must be realistic about what we are trying to do.
  I am especially troubled by the President and the Secretary of State 
continuing to use the Communist Chinese and label the Communist Chinese 
as strategic partners. That has got to stop.
  The unwillingness of the United States, as the leader of democracy 
and freedom in the world, to even object to the human rights abuses 
committed by the Beijing dictators and their henchmen against the 
people of China is little less than cowardice.
  The ghoulish repression in China is being ignored so that our 
billionaires can reap huge profits in the short term, while putting our 
own people out of work in the long run and putting our country in great 
jeopardy. Then we excuse all of this with flippant phrases like, for 
example, when we complain about this, these human rights abusers, we 
are told, oh, do not worry. We have a multifaceted relationship with 
China.
  Multifaceted. That is what our Secretary of State used to excuse the 
fact that we are not using the strength of our own moral courage to 
complain and to put the Chinese on notice that we will not put up with 
human rights abuses and aggression.
  I cannot believe that a young Madeleine Albright, while she was 
fleeing the Nazi-occupied Europe, that threat

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to mankind in those days, I cannot believe that a young Madeleine 
Albright would have accepted that we cannot, that the United States 
could not be too harsh on Adolph Hitler and his goons because, after 
all, we had to preserve a multifaceted relationship with Adolph.
  In fact, throughout the 1930's, the United States did try to appease 
Adolph Hitler's Germany and fascist Japan, despite the full knowledge 
of the atrocities that were being committed in Czechoslovakia and 
Poland and elsewhere to the Jews and the gypsies and others.
  Appeasement did not work. Leaving the subject out of conversations 
did not work. It led to World War II, and it led to a massive loss of 
American lives.
  There is a relationship between peace and freedom and democracy. What 
do we need to do? Again, let us refrain from referring to the Communist 
Chinese as strategic partners. Let us label them what they are, 
potential enemies of the United States.
  Let us develop a missile defense system for ourselves and our friends 
and our allies. Let us encourage those people who are struggling for 
democracy and dictatorships everywhere but especially in Communist 
China.
  Let us today commit ourselves that the Cox committee report, which 
will disclose this treachery, this betrayal of American interests, this 
transfer of weapons of mass destruction that we develop with our own 
tax dollars, that this transferred technology, the upgrading of 
Communist Chinese rockets, and their capability of hitting the United 
States, that we need to have that verified for the American people.
  The Cox committee report must be made public. I urge the White House 
to release the entire document. But I was outraged yesterday when the 
White House selectively declassified information in the Cox report and 
leaked it to the press. It leaked it in order to rebut the committee's 
recommendations which were aimed at preventing weapons of mass 
destruction and related technology from being sold to Communist China.
  So here, instead of disclosing all the information, just little 
pieces of it was disclosed so that friendly members of the press could 
then use it to defeat the very purpose of the select committee that the 
gentleman from California (Mr. Cox) headed.
  Does this administration have no shame? Is there no level to which it 
will go? We are all in jeopardy. Then they play this kind of game. I do 
not care what administration it is. If a hostile power has been helped 
by American technology, and we know about it, and they know about it, 
the American people should know about it, and they should know the 
details. Every one of us should be insisting that this be done.
  The Chinese must know that we are on the side of the Chinese people 
who long for democracy. But the Communist Chinese leadership must know 
that there are political and diplomatic consequences for the actions 
that they are taking and that we will be willing to stand strong, and 
that we are Americans, the same Americans that stood for freedom.
  We may be losing the Save Private Ryan generation, those people who 
saved the world from the Nazis, those people we are so proud of. I lost 
my father recently who fought in World War II. But we are the same 
American people, and we stand for those same principles.
  We are on the side of people who love freedom. We are not on the side 
of ghoulish dictators like the Nazis or the Communists or like the 
Chinese who make their deals with American billionaires. We need to act 
as a people, the freedom loving people of the world need to act 
together, and we as Americans need to lead them.

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