[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 47 (Thursday, April 13, 2000)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E589-E590]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                A TRIBUTE TO REPRESENTATIVE STEPHEN CHEN

                                 ______
                                 

                         HON. GARY L. ACKERMAN

                              of new york

                    in the house of representatives

                        Thursday, April 13, 2000

  Mr. ACKERMAN. Mr. Speaker, I want to call to the attention of my 
colleagues and submit for the Record an article regarding 
Representative Stephen Chen, who serves as the head of the Taipei 
Cultural and Economic Representative Office in Washington. The article, 
which ran in on April 3 in the New York Times, is a fitting tribute to 
Taiwan's unofficial Ambassador, who has worked diligently to promote 
and expand relations between the United States and the 22 million 
citizens of Taiwan.
  Mr. Speaker, Ambassador Chen is a thorough professional who has 
enjoyed a long and distinguished life as a career diplomat. He has 
represented his government all over the world, including postings in 
the Philippines, Brazil, Argentina and Bolivia. His experience in the 
United States also is extensive, during the past twenty-five years 
Ambassador Chen served in Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles and he has 
spent the last three years the Representative in Washington, D.C.
  Mr. Speaker, I am certain my colleagues would agree that Stephen 
Chen's charm and quiet demeanor have served Taiwan well. Whether 
meeting Members of Congress in their offices or Executive Branch 
officials in a more neutral setting, Ambassador Chen has always worked 
to make certain the United States and Taiwan remain strong friends.
  Mr. Speaker, as the article notes, Ambassador Chen is planning to 
retire shortly. I am certain all of my colleagues join me in 
congratulating Stephen Chen on a distinguished diplomatic career. We in 
the Congress are indeed fortunate to know him, and we wish him well in 
the years ahead.

          [From the New York Times (on the Web), Apr. 3, 2000]

   Public Lives--A Diplomatic Outsider Who Lobbies Inside Washington

                           (By Philip Shenon)

       WASHINGTON--AT an embassy that is not an embassy, the 
     ambassador who is not an ambassador can only imagine what it 
     is like to be a full-fledged member of Washington's 
     diplomatic corps.
       ``In the evenings, you attend cocktail parties, champagne 
     dances,'' Stephen Chen said wistfully of the black-tie world 
     from which he is largely excluded. ``This is the very 
     routine, beautiful picture of the diplomat in a textbook.''
       Mr. Chen, the director of the Taipei Economic and Cultural 
     Representative Office, the de factor embassy here for the 
     government of Taiwan, is a charming pariah.
       While he represents the interests of 22 million of the 
     freest and richest people in Asia, the 66-year-old diplomat 
     might as well be invisible, at least as far as many of the 
     State Department's China experts are concerned.
       The snubs, Mr. Chen suggested, are an obvious effort to 
     appease Beijing, and they are more than a little unfair to a 
     government that is only weeks away from a peaceful transfer 
     of power from one democratically elected leader to another, 
     the first time that has happened in almost 5,000 years of 
     Chinese history.
       ``There is a kind of unfairness,'' Mr. Chen tells a 
     visitor, the wall behind his desk decorated with a painting 
     of the delicate blossoms of the winter plum, Taiwan's 
     national

[[Page E590]]

     flower. ``We have been a model student for freedom, democracy 
     and a market economy.''
       ``We don't mind if the United States has rapprochement with 
     mainland China--we think it's good to bring the P.R.C. into 
     the family of civilizations,'' he says of the People's 
     Republic of China,
       Because the United States has no diplomatic relations with 
     Taiwan and has recognized the Communist government in Beijing 
     as the sole representative of the people of China, Mr. Chen 
     and his staff of nearly 200 are barred from the premises of 
     the State Department.
       They are not invited to diplomatic receptions at the White 
     House, or to most of the dinner parties and glittery balls 
     held at the embassies of nations that recognize Beijing.
       When Taiwanese diplomats want to talk with Clinton 
     administration officials, the meetings are often held in 
     hotel coffee shops.
       ``We must meet in a neutral setting, that is the rule,'' 
     says Mr. Chen, explaining the awkward logistics of the job.
       Relations with China have been especially jittery since 
     Taiwan's election last month of the new president, Chen Shui-
     bian, a former democracy activist who long advocated Taiwan's 
     independence and whose victory ended half a century of 
     Nationalist rule.
       On the eve of the election, Chinese leaders all but warned 
     of an invasion if Mr. Chen and his party were victorious. 
     Since the election, both Mr. Chen and Beijing have softened 
     their rhetoric, and Mr. Chen has recently insisted that he 
     sees no need for an independence declaration.
       Stephen Chen, who is not related to the new president, 
     welcomes the moderated rhetoric from Taiwan's new government. 
     The Communist leaders in Beijing, he says, would strike only 
     `` if they should be unnecessarily provoked.''
       ``We have been dealing with them for more than 60 years,'' 
     he said. ``We knew when they are bluffing, when they are not 
     bluffing. If we don't give them an excuse, I don't think 
     they're going to attack.''
       Mr. Chen, who was born in the Chinese city of Nanjing, last 
     saw the mainland in 1949, when his family was on the run from 
     the victorious Communist forces of Mao Zedong. They fled to 
     Taiwan, his father a diplomat in the service of the 
     Nationalist leader, Chiang Kai-shek.
       His father was assigned to the embassy in the Philippines 
     when Mr. Chen was 15, and he remained there for more than a 
     decade, attending college in Manila, marrying his Chinese-
     Filipino high school sweetheart and becoming fluent in 
     English.
       In 1960, he returned to Taiwan and passed the foreign 
     service exam. He was first sent to Rio de Janeiro, and then 
     to Argentina and Bolivia. In 1973, he was named consul 
     general to Atlanta, where he remained until the United States 
     severed relations with Taiwan and recognized Beijing six 
     years later.
       Mr. Chen said he can remember sitting in his living room in 
     Atlanta, watching the televised announcement by President 
     Carter that the United States would recognize the Communist 
     government. ``I felt that I was being clobbered,'' he 
     recalled. ``A baseball bat on the head.''
       ``It seemed very unfair,'' he continued. ``It was as if the 
     United States wanted to reward a bad guy, the lousy student, 
     and to punish the good student. That was my feeling.''
       In the years since, he said, Taiwanese diplomats have 
     learned how to innovate, especially in Washington, where they 
     employ some of the city's most powerful lobbyists and retain 
     close ties to many prominent conservative members of 
     Congress.
       Mr. Chen says his office has an annual budget for lobbying 
     of about $1.2 million an contracts with 15 firms. ``They help 
     open doors, they make appointments for us,'' he said. ``But 
     we make the presentations.''
       Under a 1979 law, Taiwan can continue to buy American 
     weapons.
       And Mr. Chen has been a frequent visitor to Capitol Hill in 
     recent weeks as his government seeks Congressional approval 
     for the sale of a wish list of sophisticated weapons. ``If we 
     are deprived of basic defensive weapons, then of course we 
     are thrown to the wolves,'' he said.
       Mr. Chen is considering a visit to the lair of the wolves. 
     After 40 years in the diplomatic service, he is nearing 
     retirement, and he is planning a vacation on the mainland, 
     which is now permitted.
       ``I tell you very frankly, I would like to see the Great 
     Wall,'' he said. ``This belongs to the legacy of China. It 
     has nothing to do with Communism.''

     

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