[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 83 (Thursday, June 4, 2009)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6164-S6165]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




              20TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE TIANANMEN CRACKDOWN

  Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, 1989 was a seminal year in world history. 
Late in the year, on November 9, the Berlin Wall fell. And like 
dominoes, Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Bulgaria went from being 
Soviet satellites to nascent democracies.
  The revolutions of 1989 would set the tone for the quick and peaceful 
breakup of the Soviet Union. The winds of change were bringing 
democracy and freedom to the oppressed. I look forward to honoring the 
peaceful revolutions of 1989 later this year.
  But I want to speak today about the revolution that never was, an 
event that took place 20 years ago this week, in a country where people 
remain subject to totalitarianism and tyranny--a peaceful prodemocracy 
rally that was snuffed out with a brutality the world had not seen 
since the invasion of Czechoslovakia by the USSR in 1968.
  It started much like the revolutions of 1989. Hu Yaobang, the Sixth 
General Secretary of the Communist Party of China, was famous for 
supporting ideas like political reform and capitalism--not much 
different from Lech Walesa of Poland or Vaclav Havel of Czechoslovakia.
  When he died on April 15, 1989, thousands of Chinese students began a 
peaceful protest in Tiananmen Square in his honor and to call for 
support of his views. Protestors continued to assemble for weeks, 
calling for nothing more than a dialog with their government and party 
leaders on how to combat corruption and how to accelerate economic and 
political reforms such as freedom of expression and democracy.

  More than a million people would eventually gather in Tiananmen 
Square in the shadow of the Forbidden City and the monument in front of 
Chairman Mao's mausoleum. That 1 million people who congregated were 
just in Beijing. Protests had spread across the vast expanse of China, 
in city after city and community after community.
  On the night of June 3, 1989, 15,000 soldiers with armored tanks 
stormed Tiananmen Square to put down the protests.
  On June 4, the Chinese Red Army fired upon the protestors and those 
in the surrounding areas.
  On June 5, as the crackdown continued, more than 300,000--300,000--
Chinese troops amassed in and around Tiananmen Square.
  There, the world witnessed one of the pivotal moments of the 20th 
century--20 years ago this week--when an unknown protestor stood in 
front of a column of Chinese Army tanks. He stood alone. Surely he 
wanted the tanks to stop. Just as surely, he wanted to stop the violent 
crackdown. He has become an enduring symbol of freedom and democracy in 
this country and around the world--but not in China, where the image 
and accounts of the heroic act are banned, attempts to erase it from 
history.
  The identity and fate of this young man are not known. However, it is 
generally agreed that he died in a Chinese prison for his brave act of 
nonviolence.
  The Chinese Government continues to deny Western estimates of 300 
dead and 20,000 arrests and detentions during the Tiananmen crackdown.
  The United States responded to the crackdown by suspending all 
government and commercial military sales and all high-level government-
to-government exchanges.
  We cannot go back and change the past. But we can begin to hold China 
accountable for its actions. Not only does China continue to hold 
people in jail based on their actions at the Tiananmen protest, but the 
fear from the crackdown continues to remind Chinese citizens of what 
they may face should they try again to bring freedom and political 
reform to their nation.
  Today, in Beijing, police are on the streets in and around Tiananmen 
Square to preempt--not to control but to preempt--any observance of the 
anniversary.
  In Hong Kong, 150,000 people showed up for a candlelight vigil in 
remembrance of those who died 20 years ago this week.
  The government has shut down much of the Internet, including Western 
news sources, for fear that its citizens may learn what really 
happened. The police are using umbrellas to block cameras. It is a 
spectacle and it is a travesty.
  For too long, the West has looked the other way as China declares a 
war on human rights.
  For too long, the West has rewarded China with lopsided trade 
policies while China continues to carry out a war on minority cultures.
  The United States should not endorse in any way the brutal and 
horrific policies of the Chinese Government. Instead, we reward them. 
Our trade deficit with China in the first 3 months of this year was 
more than $50 billion. Last year, it was a quarter trillion dollars.
  China manipulates its currency. Most economists agree that the 
Chinese yuan is 30 to 40 percent undervalued. That manipulation is a 
pure and simple subsidy--a coerced and false price reduction--on 
everything it produces. It puts our manufacturers at a disadvantage, 
but there is so much money to be made by U.S. investors that investors 
and large corporate interests and our government simply look the other 
way.
  China profits from its abysmal human rights record. It profits from 
its nearly nonexistent environmental standards. But American investors, 
the American Government, American business, look the other way.
  China refuses to enforce its labor laws. But there is money to be 
made. So American investors, American corporations, and the American 
government look the other way. China benefits from its human rights 
abuses, but again, American investors, American corporations, and the 
American Government look the other way.

  Even before this current recession, the U.S. manufacturing sector has 
been in crisis. Forty thousand American factories have closed in the 
past decade. Since 2000, the United States has lost more than 4 million 
manufacturing jobs, many in the Presiding Officer's home State of 
Colorado, and 200,000 manufacturing jobs in Ohio.
  A 2008 study by the Economic Policy Institute found the United States 
has lost more than 2.3 million jobs since 2001 as a direct result of 
the U.S. trade deficit with China. We shouldn't let China profit from 
suppression.
  It is not just the Chinese who are pushing for the status quo. 
Investors

[[Page S6165]]

who profit from their investments in China--American investors, 
American companies--actively support a regime that is trying to become 
a global competitor with our Nation. Multinational corporations know no 
boundaries. Too often these companies leave their moral compass at 
home.
  The United States and all democratic governments should stand up to, 
rather than apologize for, China's brutal regime. If China seeks to 
become a responsible member of the international community, its actions 
should match its aspirations.
  Since the Tiananmen Square protest and crackdown, China has continued 
to deny its people basic freedoms of speech and religion and assembly. 
It has increased severe cultural and religious suppression of ethnic 
minorities such as the Tibetans, the Taiwanese, and the Uighurs in 
western Muslim parts of China. It has increased persecution of Chinese 
Christians. It has increased detention and harassment of dissidents and 
journalists and has maintained tight controls on freedom of speech and 
the Internet.
  Earlier today I had the pleasure of meeting again with someone I 
worked with 10 years ago, Wei Jingsheng. Wei Jingsheng, who is about 60 
now, has been called the ``father of Chinese democracy.'' He spent 18 
years in prison. He was an electrician at the Beijing Zoo. He spent 18 
years in prison for the cause of freedom and democracy in his home 
country. He was jailed because the Chinese Government accused him of 
conspiring against it by writing about democracy. Since his release 
from prison for the second time, Wei Jingsheng this time was exiled to 
Canada. He has been a force for democratic change for his nation, 
founding the Overseas Chinese Democracy Coalition and the Wei Jingsheng 
Foundation. He has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize seven 
different times. He lives in Washington, the capital of our democracy, 
but he continues to fight for democracy in his home country.
  The Chinese people, like Americans, are trying to live meaningful, 
peaceful lives and create a better world for their children. 
Unfortunately, they are held hostage by a brutal, one-party Communist 
totalitarian regime. This regime benefits from many of our country's 
policies, from lax trade enforcement to our lax response in the face of 
blatant human rights abuses. The United States, by its acquiescence, 
has helped to prop up the Chinese Communist party. The partner in 
working to prop up the Chinese Communist party is large U.S. 
corporations.
  Wei Jingsheng told me, as we walked the halls of the House of 
Representatives in 1999 during the discussion and debate on the 
permanent normal trade relations with China, he looked me in the eye 
and he said the vanguard of the Communist party revolution in the 
United States--the vanguard of the Chinese Communist party in the 
United States of America--is American CEOs. It was the American CEOs 
who walked the halls of Congress in 1989--our Presiding Officer 
remembers this--who walked the halls of Congress in 1989 lobbying on 
behalf of the Chinese Communist party dictatorship to get trade 
advantages to China. It was the CEOs of many of America's largest 
corporations who walked from office to office in the Senate and in the 
House of Representatives begging Members of the House and Senate to 
vote to give trade advantages to this Communist party dictatorship--
this dictatorship that oppresses its people, that inflicted violence on 
those people in 1989, and has ever since. It was American CEOs who 
lobbied for trade advantages for China so that China, in the end, would 
take millions of jobs from the United States of America--from Galion, 
OH, and Toledo, OH, and Akron and Youngstown and Dayton--hundreds of 
thousands of jobs in my State because American CEOs lobbied this House, 
this Senate, and lobbied the Congress down the hall to give trade 
advantages to the Communist party dictatorship in China. We have paid 
the price. The Chinese people have paid an even more important price.
  I am proud to join with Senator Inhofe to be introducing with him a 
resolution acknowledging the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square 
protest and crackdown. The resolution is simple. It honors those who 
died in the protest. It demands that China release its political and 
its religious prisoners.
  Today as we look back on the Tiananmen protest, we honor the lives of 
those who died in a struggle for freedom. Let's remember that brave, 
unnamed protestor in front of the tank who 20 years ago believed, like 
Wei Jingsheng believes, that one person can change the world through 
peace and nonviolence. Think what a whole nation could do.
  Mr. President, I note the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. BURR. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. BURR. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to be recognized for 
up to 30 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Without objection, it is so ordered.

                          ____________________