[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 52 (Tuesday, April 24, 2001)]
[House]
[Pages H1546-H1551]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
WAKE UP, AMERICA: ENGAGEMENT WITH CHINA HAS FAILED
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Ferguson). Under the Speaker's announced
policy of January 3, 2001, the gentleman from California (Mr.
Rohrabacher) is recognized for half of the remaining time until
midnight, approximately 58 minutes.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, one month ago, the Communist regime
that controls the mainland of China attacked an American surveillance
aircraft while it was in international waters. After being knocked out
of the sky, 24 American military personnel, the crew of the
surveillance craft, were held hostage for nearly 2 weeks. The Communist
Chinese blamed us and would not return the crew until the United States
was humiliated before the world.
Wake up, America. What is going on here? Large financial interests in
our country whose only goal is exploiting the cheap, near-slave labor
of China have been leading our country down the path to catastrophe.
How much more proof do we need that the so-called engagement theory is
a total failure? Our massive investment in China, pushed and promoted
by American billionaires and multinational corporations, has created
not a more peaceful, democratic China, but an aggressive nuclear-armed
bully that now threatens the world with its hostile acts and
proliferation. Do the Communist Chinese have to murder American
personnel or attack the United States or our allies with their missiles
before those who blithesomely pontificate about the civilizing benefits
of building the Chinese economy will admit that China for a decade has
been going in the opposite direction than predicted by the so-called
``free traders.''
We have made a monstrous mistake, and if we do not face reality and
change our fundamental policies, instead of peace, there will be
conflict. Instead of democratic reform, we will see a further
retrenchment of a regime that is run by gangsters and thugs, the
world's worst human rights abusers.
Let us go back to basics. The mainland of China is controlled by a
rigid, Stalinistic Communist party. The regime is committing genocide
in Tibet. It is holding as a captive the designated successor of the
Dalai Lama, who is the spiritual leader of the Tibetan people. By the
way, this person, the designated new leader, is a little boy. They are
holding hostage a little boy in order to terrorize the Tibetan people.
The regime is now, at this moment, arresting thousands of members of
the Falun Gong, which is nothing more threatening than a meditation and
yoga society. Christians of all denominations are being brutalized
unless they register with the state and attend controlled churches.
Just in the last few days, there has been a round-up of Catholics who
were practicing their faith outside of state control. Now they are in a
Chinese prison.
There are no opposition parties in China. There is no free press in
China. China is not a free society under anyone's definition. More
importantly, it is not a society that is evolving toward freedom.
President Richard Nixon first established our ties with the Communist
Chinese in 1972 at the height of the Cold War. That was a brilliant
move. At that particular moment, it was a brilliant move. It enabled us
to play the power of one dictatorship off the power of another
dictatorship. We played one against the other at a time when we had
been weakened by the Vietnam War and at a time when Soviet Russia was
on the offensive.
During the Reagan years, we dramatically expanded our ties to China,
but do not miss the essential fact that justified that relationship and
made it different than what has been going on these last 10 years.
China was at that time, during the Reagan administration, evolving
toward a freer, more open society, a growing democratic movement was
evident, and the United States, our government and our people, fostered
this movement. Under President Reagan, we brought tens of thousands of
students here, and we sent
[[Page H1547]]
teams from our National Endowment for Democracy there. We were working
with them to build a more democratic society, and it looked like that
was what was going to happen. All of this ended, of course, in
Tiananmen Square over 10 years ago.
Thousands of Chinese gathered there in Tiananmen Square in Beijing to
demand a more open and democratic government. For a moment, it appeared
like there had been an historic breakthrough. Then, from out of the
darkness came battle-hardened troops and tanks to wipe out the
opposition. The people who ordered that attack are still holding the
reins of power in China today and, like all other criminals who get
away with scurrilous deeds, they have become emboldened and arrogant.
My only lament is that had Ronald Reagan been President during that
time of Tiananmen Square, things, I think, would have been different;
but he was not. Since that turn of events about 12 years ago, things
have been progressively worse. The repression is more evident than
ever. The belligerence and hostility of Beijing is even more open.
Underscoring the insanity of it all, the Communist Chinese have been
using their huge trade surplus with the United States to upgrade their
military and expand its warfighting capabilities.
Communist China's arsenal of jets, its ballistic missiles, its naval
forces have all been modernized and reinforced. In the last 2 years,
they have purchased destroyers from the former Soviet Union. These
destroyers are armed with Sunburn missiles. These were systems that
were designed during the Cold War by the Russians to destroy American
aircraft carriers.
Yes, the Communist Chinese are arming themselves to sink American
aircraft carriers, to kill thousands upon thousands of American
sailors. Make no mistake about it, China's military might now threatens
America and world peace. If there is a crisis in that part of the world
again, which there will be, we can predict that some day, unlike the
last crisis when American aircraft carriers were able to become a
peaceful element to bring moderation of judgment among the players who
were in conflict, instead, American aircraft carriers will find
themselves vulnerable, and an American President will have to face the
choice of risking the lives of all of those sailors on those aircraft
carriers.
Mr. Speaker, how is it, then, that a relatively poor country can
afford to enlarge its military in such a way, to the point that it can
threaten a superpower such as the United States of America?
{time} 2215
Even as China's slide into tyranny and militarism continued in these
last 12 years, the United States government has permitted a totally
indefensible economic rules of engagement to guide our commercial ties
with the mainland of China.
While China was going in the right direction, permitting that country
to have a large trade advantage and thus providing a large reserve of
hard currency may or may not have made sense, as long as China was
going in the right direction and going towards democracy. Maybe we
would like to build up a freer China that way.
But it made no sense, and it still makes no sense, for the United
States to permit a country that is sinking even deeper into tyranny and
into anti-Western hostility to have a huge trade surplus as a resource
to call upon to meet their military needs.
In effect, the Communist Chinese have been using the tens of billions
of dollars of trade surplus with the United States each year to build
their military power and military might so some day the Communist
Chinese might be able to kill millions of our people, or at least to
threaten us to do that in order to back us down into defeat without
ever coming to a fight.
We have essentially been arming and equipping our worst potential
enemy and financing our own destruction. How could we let such a crime
against the security of our country happen? Well, it was argued by some
very sincere people that free trade would bring positive change to
China, and that engagement would civilize the Communist regime.
Even as evidence stacked upon more evidence indicated that China was
not liberalizing, that just the opposite was happening, the barkers for
open markets kept singing their song: ``Most-favored-nation status,
just give us this and things will get better.'' It was nonsense then
and it is nonsense today. But after all that has happened, one would
think that the shame factor would silence these eternal optimists.
Perhaps I am a bit sensitive because, first and foremost, let me
state unequivocally that I consider myself a free trader. Yes, I
believe in free trade between free people. What we should strive for is
to have more and more open trade with all free and democratic
countries, or countries that are heading in the right direction.
I am thus positively inclined towards President Bush's efforts to
establish a free trade zone among the democratic countries in this
hemisphere. I will read the fine print, but my inclination is to
facilitate trade between democracies.
When I say, ``I will read the fine print,'' I will be especially
concerned with a free trade agreement, and I will be looking to that
free trade agreement to make sure that we have protection that our
sensitive technologies, which can be used for military purposes, will
not be transferred from the countries in our hemisphere, democratic
countries in our hemisphere, to China or to any other countries that
are potential enemies of the United States. This will have to be in
that free trade agreement.
There will have to be protections against the transfer of our
technology to our enemies. This is more of a concern following new
science and technology agreements that were signed by China and
countries like Brazil and Venezuela recently. Dictatorships are always
going to try to gain in any agreement that they have with us, and they
are always going to try to manipulate other agreements and the rules of
the game so they can stay in power.
When one applies the rules of free trade to a controlled society, as
we have been told over and over again, more trade, and let us have free
trade with China, that is going to make them more dependent on us and
they will be freer and more prosperous, more likely to be peaceful
people, well, if we apply the rules of free trade to a dictatorship,
ultimately what happens is that it is only free trade in one direction.
On one end we have free people, a democratic people who are not
controlled by their government, and thus are basically unregulated and
are moving forward for their own benefit. But on the other end, the
trade will be controlled and manipulated to ensure that the current
establishment of that country stays in power.
Never has that been more evident than in America's dealing with
Communist China. In this case, it is so very blatant.
Those advocating most-favored-nation status, or as it is called now,
normal trade relations, have always based their case on the boon to our
country represented by the sale of American goods to ``the world's
largest market.'' That is their argument. Here on this floor over and
over and over again we heard people say, ``We have to have these normal
trade relations because we have to sell our products, the products made
by the American people, to the world's largest market.''
That is a great pitch. The only problem is, it is not true. The sale
of U.S.-produced vacuum cleaners, refrigerators, autos, you name the
commercial item, are almost a non-factor in the trade relationship
between our countries. They are a minuscule amount of what is
considered the trade analysis of these two countries.
During these many years that we have given China most-favored-nation
status or normal trade relations, the power elite there never lowered
China's tariffs, and in fact increased the tariffs in some areas, and
erected barriers to prevent the sale of all but a few U.S.-made
products.
So while we had low tariffs, and intentionally brought our tariffs
down by most-favored-nation, for over a decade, even as China was
slipping more into tyranny, they were permitted to have high tariffs
and block our goods from coming in.
Beijing would not permit its own people to buy American-made consumer
items. They were not looking for a trade relationship with the United
States for their people to be able to
[[Page H1548]]
buy American products. That is not what they were looking for. That is
not what it was all about. They knew it, but yet our people were told
over and over and over and over and over again, ``Oh, we have to have
most-favored-nation status and normal trade relations in order to sell
American products to the world's largest market.''
That is not what was going on. It is not what the reality was.
Instead, the Communist Chinese were out to get American money, lots of
it, and American money to build factories, and they wanted the
Americans to build the factories with our technology and our money in
their country.
By the way, many of the factories that were built there were not
built in order to sell products to the Chinese people. Those factories
were built to export products to the United States.
The system that developed with the acquiescence of our government,
and this is no secret, what I am talking about tonight is no secret to
anyone except to the American people, our government acquiesced to this
for years, this policy put the American people, the American working
people, on the losing end of the transformational action in the long
run and sometimes even in the medium run.
The Chinese, because of our low tariffs, flooded our market with
their products, and blocked our goods from entering China, and all the
while we were hearing over and over again, ``We must have most-favored-
nation status in order to sell American products in the world's largest
market.''
They droned on year after year that most-favored-nation status was so
important to selling our products in the world's largest market. I will
just repeat that four or five times, because we must have heard it a
thousand times on this floor, and every time said, I am sure, in
complete sincerity by the people who were expressing it, but were
totally wrong. A very quick look into the statistics could have
indicated that.
By the way, just to let Members know, the people of Taiwan, numbering
22 million people, buy more from us annually than the 1.2 Chinese on
the mainland. The Taiwanese, with 22 million people, buy more consumer
products from us than do 1.2 billion Chinese in the mainland.
What has happened? What has happened as a result of these nonsensical
counterproductive policies, anti-American policies to some degree, even
though our own government has acquiesced in them? It has resulted in a
decline in domestic manufacturing facilities in the United States. In
other words, we have been closing down our factories and putting our
people out of work.
By the way, that does not mean the company is put out of business.
Those factories spring up someplace else. There is this flood of
Chinese products, the factory closes down, and guess where it reopens?
It reopens, yes, in Communist China, using our modern technology and
our capital, which is what the Chinese want to have invested in their
country.
Adding insult to injury, our working people, some of them, whose jobs
are being threatened by imports, our working people are being taxed in
order to provide taxpayer-subsidized loans and loan guarantees for
those corporate leaders wishing to close down their operations in the
United States and set up on the mainland of China.
Even if China was a free country, that would not be a good idea. I do
not believe we should be doing that even for democratic countries. But
for us to do that to a Communist dictatorship or any kind of
dictatorship, to have the American taxpayer subsidize these
investments, taking the risks on the shoulders of the American taxpayer
in order to build the economy of a vicious dictatorship, this is
insane. This is an insane policy. This is not free trade between free
people. It has nothing to do with free trade. It is subsidized trade
with subjugated people.
Companies that were permitted to sell their product to the Chinese in
these last 10 years, and there have been a few, companies like Boeing
who have attempted to sell airplanes to China, have found themselves in
a very bad predicament. As part of the deal enabling them to sell
planes now to Communist China, they have had to set up manufacturing
facilities in China to build the parts, or at least some of the parts
for the airplane.
Thus, over a period of time, what the Chinese have managed to do is
to have the United States just build factories and pay for them. Or, as
part of an agreement to sell the airplane, we have set up an aerospace
industry in China that will compete with our own aerospace industry.
I come from California. I come from a district in which aerospace is
a mighty important part of our economy. I just want to thank all the
people who have permitted this policy, this blackmail of American
companies, to go on under the name, under the guise of free trade. It
is going to sell out our own national interest 10 years down the road
when these people will have a modern aerospace industry building
weapons and being able to undercut our own people. Gee, thanks.
Making matters worse, many of the so-called companies in China that
are partnering with American industrialists, and American
industrialists, when they are going to build in China, are often
required to have a Chinese company as their partner as a prerequisite
to them investing in China, in short order these so-called partners end
up taking over the company. So many of American companies have been
there and have been burned.
Guess what, we look at these private Chinese companies that were
partners with our American firms, we look at them, and what do we find
out? They are not private companies at all. Many of them are
subsidiaries of the People's Liberation Army. That is right, the
Communist Chinese army owns these companies. These are nothing more
than military people in civilian clothing. Their profits end up paying
for weapons targeting America, and we are paying them to build the
companies that make those profits.
Perhaps the most alarming betrayal of American national security
interests surfaced about 5 years ago when some of America's biggest
aerospace firms went into China hoping to use Chinese rockets to launch
American satellites.
{time} 2230
They were trying to make a fast buck. It did not cost them a lot more
to launch satellites here.
Yes, the Chinese were insisting that any satellites we put up for
them be put up on their rockets. I personally thought that, as long as
we made sure there was no technology transfer, that was an okay policy.
As long as we just launched our American satellite which helped them
set up a telephone system or something in China, that is fine if they
never got ahold of it, and that would be okay.
I was guaranteed, along with the other Members of this body, there
would be incredible safeguards. The last administration briefed us on
the safeguards. Then as soon as we approved of letting these satellite
deals go through and our satellites be launched on Chinese rockets, the
administration trash canned all of the safeguards. I do not understand
it. I do not understand why people did this.
But when all was said and done, the Communist Chinese rocket arsenal
was filled with more reliable and more capable rockets, thanks to
Loral, Hughes and other aerospace firms. Communist Chinese rockets,
which were a joke 10 years ago, when Bill Clinton became President of
the United States, they were a joke, one out of 10 failed, exploded
before they could get into space. Today they are dramatically more
likely to hit their targets, and they even carry multiple warheads.
Where before they had one warhead and nine out of 10 would explode, now
about 9 out of 10 get to their target, and some of them are carrying
multiple warheads.
The Cox report detailed this travesty. We should not forget the Cox
report. Unfortunately, there has been innuendo after innuendo as if the
Cox report has in some way been proven wrong. There are no reports that
indicate that what the gentleman from California (Mr. Cox) and his task
force proved has in some way been discredited. In fact, there was a
transfer of technology to the Communist Chinese that did great damage
to our national security and put millions of American lives at risk
that did not have to be put at risk.
Yet, even with all this staring Congress in the face, we have
continued to give Most Favored Nations status to China and even now
vote to make them
[[Page H1549]]
part of the World Trade Organization. Why? One explanation, well just
bad theory. Expanding trade, of course, they believe will make things
better. But expanding trade did not make things better. Expanding trade
with a dictatorship, as I have mentioned, just expands the power base
and solidifies the bad guys in power.
Of course the other explanation of why all this is going on, why we
end up seeing our national security trashed is pure greed on some
individuals' parts.
Our businessmen have been blinded, not by the dream of selling U.S.-
made products to China as they would have you believe in the debates
here on the floor of the House, but rather blinded by the vision of
using virtually slave labor for quick profits on the mainland of China.
With little or no competition, no negotiators, no lawyers, no
environmental restrictions, no unions, no public consent, it sounds
like a businessman's dream to me. Yes, it is a businessman's dream if
you just blot out the picture of a grinding tyranny and the human
rights abuses that are going on and the horrible threat to the United
States of America that is emerging because of the things that are going
on and the things that are being done.
Because you are a businessman, because you are engaged in making a
profit as we are free to do in the United States does not exempt you
from being a patriot or being loyal to the security interests of the
United States of America.
Today's American overseas businessman quite often is a far cry from
the Yankee clipper captains of days gone by. In those days, our Yankee
clipper ships sailed the ocean, cut through those seas, the Seven Seas.
They were full going over, and they were full coming back. They waived
our flag. Our flag was flying from those clipper ships, and our flag
stood for freedom and justice. Those Yankee clipper captains and those
business entrepreneurs were proud to be Americans.
Today, America's tycoons often see nationalism, read that loyalty to
the United States, as an antiquated notion. They are players in the
global economy now, they feel. Patriotism they believe is old think.
Well, we cannot rely on the decisions of people like this to
determine what the interests of the United States of America is to be.
Yet, the influence of these billionaires and these tycoons, these
people who would be willing to invest in a dictatorship or a democracy,
they could care less which one, they do not care if there is blood
dripping off the hand that hands them the dollar bills, those
individuals influence our government. Their influence on this elected
body is monumental, if not insurmountable at times.
I believe in capitalism. I am a capitalist. I am someone who believes
in the free enterprise system, make no mistake about it. But free is
the ultimate word. People must be free to be involved in enterprise. We
must respect the basic tenets of liberty and justice that have provided
us a country in which people are free to uplift themselves through hard
work and through enterprise.
Today, more often than not, we are talking about how people are
trying to find out ways of manipulating government on how to make a
profit, not how to build a better product that will enrich everyone's
life and make a profit by doing that, which is the essence of the free
enterprise system.
More and more people are not even looking again to this great country
and considering this great country for the role that it is playing in
this world and how important it is and how we should never sacrifice
the security of this country. Because if this country falls, the hope
for freedom and justice everywhere in the world falls. No, instead they
have put their baskets, not in the United States of America, put their
eggs in the basket of globalism. Well, globalism will not work without
democratic reform.
China will corrupt the WTO, the World Trade Organization, just as it
has corrupted the election processes in the United States of America.
You can see it now 20 years from now, maybe 10 years from now, the
panels of the WTO, you know, made up of countries from all over the
world, Latin America, Africa, Middle East. There are members of those
panels making these decisions, they will not have ever been elected by
anybody, much less the people of the United States of America, yet we
will be expected to follow their dictates. Communist China, they will
pay those people off in a heartbeat. Why not? They did it to our
people.
Remember the campaign contributions given to Vice President Gore at
the Buddhist Temple? Remember the money delivered to the Clinton's by
Johnny Chung? Where did that money come from? We are talking about
hundreds of thousands of dollars. Where did it come from? It originated
with Chinese military officers. These military officers were wearing
civilian clothes. They were top officers in that part of the People's
Liberation Army that produces missiles. That is where the money came
from, all this while our most deadly missile technology was being
transferred to Communist China. One wonders why the Communist Chinese
leaders are arrogant and think that American leaders are cowards and
corrupt when we let this happen.
Our country has, in short, had a disastrously counterproductive
policy. We have, over the last 10 years, built our worst potential
enemy from a weak, introverted power into a powerful economic military
force, a force that is looking to dominate all of Asia. When I say
worst potential enemy, that is not just my assessment. That is what the
Communist Chinese leaders themselves believe and are planning for.
Why do you think Communist Chinese Boss Jiang Zemin recently visited
Cuba? He was in Cuba with Fidel Castro who hates our guts when he
released the hostages, the American military personnel that he was
holding hostage. What do you think that was all about? He was telling
the whole world we are standing up to the United States of America, and
they are our enemy. He was involved with an activity that was declaring
to the world his hostility towards the United States.
Why, when you have a country like this who are professing hostility
to the United States and doing such as this, why are we permitting them
to buy up ports that will effectively give them control of the Panama
Canal, which is what they did a year and a half ago.
The Panama Canal, the last administration let the Chinese, the
Communist Chinese, through bribery, tremendously expand its power in
Panama and, through bribery, let it get control of the port facilities
at both ends of the Panama Canal. Why would we let such a thing happen?
In many ways, we are repeating history. In the 1920s, Japanese
militarists wiped out Japan's fledgling democratic movement. That it
did. In doing so, it set a course for Japan. Japan then was a racist
power which believed it, too, had a right to dominate Asia. Japanese
militarists also knew that only the United States of America stood in
their way. This is deja vu all over again as Yogi Berra once said.
The Communist Chinese, too, are militarists who seek to dominate
Asia. They think they are racially superior to everyone. They are
unlike their Japanese predecessors, however, willing to go slow, and
they have been going slow. But make no mistake about it, they intend to
dominate Asia, all of it. And even know, their maps claim Siberia,
Mongolia and huge chunks of the South China Sea.
The confrontation with our surveillance plane must be reviewed in
this perspective if the damage to the United States and the imprudence
and arrogance on the part of the communist Chinese are to be
understood.
China's claim on the South China Sea includes the Spratley Islands. I
have a map of the South China Sea with me tonight. Hainan Island. Our
airplane was intercepted, knocked out of the sky somewhere in here. But
what we are not told about and what the media is not focusing on and no
one has been talking about is this plane was precisely in the waters
between Hainan Island and the Spratley Islands.
For those who do not know what the Spratley Islands are, they are
just a series of reefs that are under water at high tide and at low
tide above water. They are just a short distance, as you can see, this
is here, this is the Philippines; and right about 100 miles offshore,
the Spratley Islands. Yet they are several hundred miles from China.
Yet the Chinese are trying to claim these islands. That is what this
was all
[[Page H1550]]
about. Not only are these islands, the Spratley Islands, the home of
natural gas and oil deposits, but they are also in a strategic
location.
{time} 2245
The Spratly Islands, having them in China's power, having them being
recognized as part of China, would, of course, be a disaster to the
Philippines whose oil and gas that belongs to, but also it would give
the Communist Chinese sovereignty rights which would permit them to
bracket the South China Sea. China, Hainan Island, the Spratlys would
bracket the South China Sea, from this land point to this land point.
Thus, we have a situation where when China claims, which it does, a
200-mile zone, that would leave China with a stranglehold on the South
China Sea which is one of the most important commercial areas on this
planet. It would have a stranglehold on Japan and Korea.
What do you think our friends in the Persian Gulf, for example, would
think about it if they understood that this was a power play, that what
we had with the surveillance aircraft was a power play? The reason why
the Communist Chinese were demanding an apology then, they were
demanding an apology because supposedly we were in their airspace. If
we apologized, that was a recognition of their sovereignty in
bracketing with the Spratly Islands on one side and Hainan Island on
the other side, bracketing the South China Sea. If we ended up
apologizing to the Communist regime, it would have been taken as a
legal recognition, a small one, of their sovereignty and their 200-mile
limit. That is what this was all about. That is why they were playing
hardball with us.
The American people and our allies are not being told that that is
what the stakes were. This is a long-term effort on the part of the
Communist Chinese to dominate the South China Sea and expand their
power so they could call it maybe the Communist China Sea rather than
the South China Sea. It behooves us to face these facts. That is what
it was all about. That is why they wanted an apology and that is why
they should not have gotten an apology.
I applaud this administration for wording its letter in a way that
was not and could not in any way be interpreted as a recognition of the
Chinese sovereignty over that airspace. An accommodationist policy
toward Communist China, ignoring this type of aggression, ignoring
human rights and democracy concerns while stressing expanded trade, and
even through all this you have a bunch of people saying, ``Oh, isn't it
lucky we have trade relations or we would really be in trouble with the
Communist Chinese.'' Give me a break. But ignoring those other elements
and just stressing trade as part of a so-called engagement theory has
not worked.
The regime in China is more powerful, more belligerent to the United
States and more repressive than ever before. President Bush's decision
in the wake of this incident at Hainan Island to sell an arms package
to Taiwan including destroyers, submarines and an antiaircraft upgrade
was good. At least it shows more moxie than what the last
administration did.
I would have preferred to see the Aegis system be provided to our
Taiwanese friends. But at least we have gone forward with a respectable
arms deal that will help Taiwan defend itself and thus deter military
action in that area.
But after the Hainan Island incident, the very least we should be
doing is canceling all U.S. military exchanges with Communist China. I
mean, I do not know if they are still delivering us those berets or
not, but that is just ridiculous to think that we are getting our
military berets from Communist China. We should cancel all military
exchanges.
The American people should be put on alert that they are in danger if
they travel to the mainland of China. And we should quit using our tax
dollars through the Export-Import Bank, the IMF and the World Bank to
subsidize big business when they want to build a factory in China or in
any other dictatorship.
Why are we helping Vietnam and China? Why are we helping those
dictatorships when nearby people, the people of the Philippines, whom I
just mentioned, who are on the front line against this Communist
aggression, who China is trying to flood drugs into their country. The
Chinese army itself is involved in the drug trade going into the
Philippines.
The Philippines are struggling to have a democracy. They have just
had to remove a president who is being bribed. Bribed by whom? Bribed
by organized crime figures from the mainland of China. When those
people in the Philippines are struggling, why are we not trying to help
them? Let us not encourage American businesses to go to Vietnam or to
Communist China, when you have got people right close by who are
struggling to have a democratic government and love the United States
of America. The people of the Philippines are strong and they love
their freedom and their liberty, but they feel like they have been
abandoned by the United States. And when we help factories to be set up
in China rather than sending work to the Philippines, and they do not
even have the money to buy the weapons to defend themselves in the
Philippines. That is why it is important for us to stand tall, so they
know they can count on us. But they can only count on us if we do what
is right and have the courage to stand up.
The same with China and India. India is not my favorite country in
the world, but I will tell you this much, the Indians are struggling to
have a free and democratic society. They have democratic institutions,
and it is a struggle because they have so many varied people that live
in India. But they are struggling to make their country better and to
have a democratic system and to have rights and have a court system
that functions, to have opposition newspapers. They do not have any of
that in China. Yet instead of helping the Indian people, we are helping
the Communist Chinese people? This is misplaced priorities at best.
Finally, in this atmosphere of turmoil and confrontation, let us
never forget who are our greatest allies, and that is the Chinese
people themselves. Let no mistake in the wording that I have used
tonight indicate that I hold the Chinese people accountable or
synonymous with the Chinese Government or with Beijing or with the
Communist Party in China. The people of China are as freedom-loving and
as pro-American as any people of the world.
The people of China are not separated from the rest of humanity. They
too want freedom and honest government. They want to improve their
lives. They do not want a corrupt dictatorship over them. And any
struggle for peace and prosperity, any plan for our country to try to
bring peace to the world and to bring a better life and to support the
cause of freedom must include the people of China.
We do not want war. We want the people of China to be free. Then we
could have free and open trade because it would be a free country and
it would be free trade between free people instead of this travesty
that we have today, which is a trade policy that strengthens the
dictatorship.
When the young people of China rose up and gathered together at
Tiananmen Square, they used our Statue of Liberty as a model for their
own goddess of liberty. That was the statue that they held forth. That
was their dream. They dreamed that her torch, the goddess of liberty,
would enlighten all China and they dreamed of a China democratic,
prosperous and free. Our shortsighted policy of subsidized one-way
trade crushes that goddess of liberty every bit as much as those Red
Army tanks did 12 years ago.
Let us reexamine our souls. Let us reexamine our policies. Let us
reach out to the people of China and claim together that we are all
people of this planet, as our forefathers said, we are the ones, we are
the people who have been given by God the rights of life, liberty and
the pursuit of happiness. That is not just for Americans. That is for
all the people of the world. And when we recognize that and reach out
with honesty and not for a quick buck, not just to make a quick buck
and then get out, but instead to reach over to those people and help
them build their country, then we will have a future of peace and
prosperity.
It will not happen if we sell out our own national security
interests. It will not happen if we are only siding with the ruling
elite in China. We want to share a world with the people of China. We
are on their side.
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Let me say this. That includes those soldiers in the People's
Liberation Army. The people in the People's Liberation Army come from
the population of China. They and those other forces at work in China
should rise up and join with all the other people in the world,
especially the American people, who believe in justice and truth; and
we will wipe away those people at the negotiating table today that
represent both sides of this negotiation, and we will sit face-to-face
with all the people in the world who love justice and freedom and
democracy, just as our forefathers thought was America's rightful role,
and we will build a better world that way.
We will not do it through a World Trade Organization. We will do it
by respecting our own rights and respecting the rights of every other
country and every other people on this planet.
I hope that tonight the American people have heard these words. The
course is not unalterable. This is a new administration. And in this
new administration, I would hope that we reverse these horrible
mistakes that have compromised our national security and undermined the
cause of liberty and justice.
I look forward to working with this administration to doing what is
right for our country and right for the cause of peace and freedom.
____________________