[Congressional Record Volume 158, Number 25 (Wednesday, February 15, 2012)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E198]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                 THE MYTH OF CHINA AS A HARMLESS TIGER

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                           HON. FRANK R. WOLF

                              of virginia

                    in the house of representatives

                      Wednesday, February 15, 2012

  Mr. WOLF. Mr. Speaker, I submit a piece authored by Chinese dissident 
Yu Jie which ran in yesterday's Washington Post. His words are deeply 
alarming about the extent of China's reach in the U.S. He rightly 
laments the lack of ``visionary politicians, such as Ronald Reagan, to 
stand up to this threat.'' I couldn't agree more.

               [From the Washington Post, Feb. 13, 2012]

                 The Myth of China as a Harmless Tiger

                              (By Yu Jie)

       Chinese dissident writers exiled to the West today get a 
     very different response than Soviet writers received not so 
     long ago.
       In 1975, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger advised 
     President Ford not to meet with writer Alexander 
     Solzhenitsyn, warning in a memorandum that doing so would 
     offend the Soviet Union. Now, similar views are held not only 
     by pragmatic politicians but also by multinational 
     corporations with large investments in China as well as 
     universities and foundations with inextricable links to 
     China.
       The Chinese communist regime's penetration of the West far 
     exceeds that of the former Soviet Union. In the Cold War era, 
     the Soviet Union was blocked behind the Iron Curtain; there 
     were few links between Soviet and Western economies. An 
     average American family would not be using products ``made in 
     the USSR.'' Today, China is deeply embedded within the 
     globalized system. An American recently wrote an interesting 
     book detailing a year of her refusal to buy products that 
     were ``made in China'' and the many difficulties she 
     encountered as a result of this decision.
       On the surface, the West has profited from its trade with 
     China. Western consumers can buy vast amounts of cheap 
     Chinese products. However, fundamental values of the West are 
     quietly being eroded: Who knows whether the American flag 
     flying outside your home was manufactured by inmates in 
     Chinese prisons or by child labor?
       I arrived in the United States a month ago, thinking I had 
     escaped the reach of Beijing, only to realize that the 
     Chinese government's shadow continues to be omnipresent. 
     Several U.S. universities that I have contacted dare not 
     invite me for a lecture, as they cooperate with China on many 
     projects. If you are a scholar of Chinese studies who has 
     criticized the Communist Party, it would be impossible for 
     you to be involved in research projects with the Chinese-
     funded Confucius Institute, and you may even be denied a 
     Chinese visa. Conversely, if you praise the Communist Party, 
     not only would you receive ample research funding but you 
     might also be invited to visit China and even received by 
     high-level officials. Western academic freedom has been 
     distorted by invisible hands.
       I believe that China is a far greater threat than the 
     former Soviet Union ever was; unfortunately, the West lacks 
     visionary politicians, such as Ronald Reagan, to stand up to 
     this threat. President Obama might perceive the Chinese 
     Communist Party as a tiger that does not bite and, hence, is 
     looking forward to Vice President Xi Jinping's visit this 
     week. Will Obama, a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, openly 
     request that China release Liu Xiaobo, a Nobel Peace laureate 
     imprisoned by the Communist Party? Why did Secretary of State 
     Hillary Rodham Clinton have the courage to meet with Burma's 
     Aung San Suu Kyi but not to meet with Liu? Is it because 
     Burma is weak, while China is strong?
       The Chinese Communist Party remains a tiger that will bite. 
     For working on human rights with Liu Xiaobo, after he was 
     awarded the Nobel Prize, I was tortured by the country's 
     secret police and nearly lost my life. Since then, dozens of 
     lawyers and writers have been subjected to brutal torture; 
     some contracted severe pneumonia after being held in front of 
     fans blowing cold air and then being baked by an electric 
     furnace. The secret police threatened me, saying that they 
     had a list of 200 anticommunist party intellectuals whom they 
     were ready to arrest and bury alive. Over the past year, the 
     number of political prisoners in China has increased, and the 
     jail sentences have become longer--yet Western voices of 
     protest have become weaker.
       Harsh internal repression and unrestrained external 
     expansion are two sides of the same coin. The Chinese 
     Communist Party recently vetoed the U.N. Security Council's 
     resolution on Syria because killings not unlike those 
     committed by Damascus continue in Tibet.
       More than a century ago, Westerners described China as a 
     ``sleeping lion''; today, it is the West that has fallen 
     asleep. As an independent writer and a Christian member of a 
     ``house church,'' I have the responsibility to tell the 
     truth: The Chinese Communist Party is still a man-eating 
     tiger.

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