[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 145 (1999), Part 12]
[House]
[Pages 17813-17816]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                             CHINA AND MFN

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Sherwood). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 6, 1999, the gentleman from California (Mr. 
Rohrabacher) is recognized for half the time until midnight.
  Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, I wish to associate myself with the 
remarks we have just heard concerning the vote that will be coming up 
tomorrow on Most Favored Nation status, or as it is now referred to, 
normal trade relations, with the Communist government of China.
  Let me just say for the record that this is a bipartisan effort. As 
we can see tonight, some people on the other side of the aisle have 
been very active; some people on my side of the aisle have been very 
active.
  Perhaps one of the greatest disappointments I have had with this 
administration is that during President Bush's term in office I was 
very disappointed in his policies toward Communist China and, in fact, 
after Tiananmen Square was bitterly disappointed in how we took that 
and the positions we were taking in response to the massacre of 
democracy advocates in Tiananmen Square.
  When George Bush lost the election in 1992 to president elect 
Clinton, I thought to myself, well, at least here is someone that I 
will be able to work with on the issue of human rights. Unfortunately, 
I had bought in to President Clinton's posturing on human rights. And I 
might add, unfortunately, all of us who have been active in the human 
rights arena have been disappointed with this administration. I 
personally feel that this administration has been the most anti-human 
rights administration in my lifetime, and it certainly has undermined 
the tough stands made by President Reagan and President Jimmy Carter, 
and has even superceded George Bush in the area of human rights.
  For example, in China, this President has decoupled trade 
negotiations with China in relationship to anything to do with human 
rights. The administration no longer has that as part of its 
negotiating position. This President personally decided to make that 
decoupling. Had a Republican president done that, I imagine people 
would remember it a great deal more because there would have been a 
much greater fracas caused by that.
  But tomorrow we will again address this issue that has been one that 
has gone on every year since my election to Congress, and tomorrow the 
House will debate legislation that has been introduced. However, it 
will be my legislation that will be debated. And that, of course, makes 
me feel a bit humble. I remember the time when I came into this body 10 
years ago when I could not have dreamed of having a piece of my 
legislation being the focal point of a major day's work of the United 
States Congress. But I have introduced legislation that will disapprove 
of the extension of so-called normal trade relations with Communist 
China, which was previously known as Most Favored Nation status.
  For the past 10 years, since the massacre of the democracy advocates 
at Tiananmen Square, and by the way, let us remember that the folks 
over in Beijing, the same people who have been in charge, the same gang 
that has been in charge, those people still deny that there was ever a 
massacre at Tiananmen Square of democracy advocates. But since then, 
the Congress has undertaken this debate every year, but there has been 
little change in the repression that is taking place in China.
  The gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi) outlined that these are 
the very same arguments that we will hear tomorrow by the advocates of 
normal trade relations with Communist China. These are the very same 
arguments that have been offered year after year after year after year.
  My colleague, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown), asked earlier on 
in his remarks what must happen for these people who come to this floor 
and suggest that there will be progress made on the human rights front; 
that there will be a liberalization; that there will be a change in 
their belligerency; that there will be positive steps taken and 
recognizable steps taken if we just engage them in this trade policy, 
what more does China have to do? How much longer will it be before 
these folks who advocate these positions with all of their heart and 
with all of their sincerity, how much longer will it take, how much 
more must China do before they admit they are wrong? They are dead 
wrong, and it is clear to everyone that they are wrong.
  I personally could not come and advocate those policies, that I 
believed perhaps were right, if they had continued over a 10-year 
period to go in exactly the opposite direction than what my predictions 
were. I, in fact, would suggest that if tomorrow a revolt broke out in 
Tibet and that nuclear weapons were dropped by the Communist Chinese 
Government on Tibet, annihilating hundreds of thousands, if not 
millions of Tibetans, we would still hear from these folks on the floor 
of the House of Representatives that if we just continue to engage them 
in this trade policy, that the policies followed by the government in 
Beijing are bound to liberalize and that the government in Beijing will 
become more civilized by their association with us.
  I believe that they could murder every last christian in China, they 
could murder every last Tibetan, they could commit genocide against 
every Muslim out in the far reaches of China, who they are also 
murdering, they could take every one of the 70 million member group, 
who are nothing more than a movement of people who believe in 
meditation and believe in exercise, as is consistent with Chinese 
tradition, they could murder every one of those people and we would 
still have on the floor of this House people advocating that we 
continue on with the same policy year after year after year after year.
  Well, something is wrong. Something is wrong, and it does not take a 
rocket scientist to know that something is wrong. It certainly might 
take a rocket scientist, however, to know exactly how much damage has 
been done to us that we have discovered in the last year. Because in 
this last year we have found out that since the last vote on Most 
Favored Nation status with China the Communist government in Beijing 
has managed to get their hands on, through theft and other methods, of 
our most deadly weapons secrets. They now have the ability to produce 
miniaturized nuclear weapons. They have the ability to produce these 
weapons of mass destruction.
  And our own companies are overseas telling them and teaching them how 
to upgrade their missile capacity and their missile capability so that 
they can more accurately target American cities with these weapons of 
mass destruction.
  Now, it is the theory of those who advocate most-favored-nation 
status that the world will be a safer place if we have this trade with 
China. But as we can see, that not only is the world not a safer place 
as the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi) has pointed out, 
Communist China is the source of this deadly weapons technology to 
Korea, to Iran, to other Third World rogue nations, but not only that, 
not only is the world not a safer place, the United States is not a 
safer place because of this. Our own country now faces the prospect of 
our companies who have gone over there to liberalize China and make 
them more pleasant, make them more consistent with the civilized values 
of the western world, our own companies have gone over there and they 
have been corrupted themselves to the point that they have

[[Page 17814]]

armed our worst potential enemy with weapons that could incinerate tens 
of millions if not hundreds of millions of American citizens.
  There is something wrong with this policy. There is something 
dreadfully wrong. What more needs to be done before people will come on 
the floor of this House and will admit that that policy does not work? 
Year after year after year the same arguments, yet the empirical 
evidence suggests that they are going in the wrong direction. Making 
matters worse, as China has gone in the wrong direction, as China has 
kept up its roadblocks to the importation of American goods, kept up 
its high tariffs, used the surplus that it is generating by its tariffs 
on our goods and taking advantage of the low tariffs in exporting their 
goods to the United States, taking the tens of billions of dollars that 
they have earned and while they are using that money to modernize their 
weapons, to aim it at the United States, we have an administration that 
insists on calling Communist China, again the world's worst human 
rights abuser, is being called our strategic partner.
  If we do not change our policy towards the world's worst human rights 
abuser, Americans will pay a woeful price. It will not be just the 
Tibetans who will be slaughtered but it will be the American people, 
not just losing their jobs as we have shown in this testimony before us 
this evening, we have shown how our ability to compete with China and 
the slave labor prices in China and the slave labor wages in China, our 
ability has been cut down as we export technology to that country. Yes, 
we are paying an economic price. The Tibetans are paying a price with 
their lives as are the Muslims in that country, as are the dissidents 
in that country. But if we keep up this policy, the American people 
will pay a woeful price for this irrational, immoral and greed-driven 
policy that is putting us in grave jeopardy to a country that is 
controlled by gangsters and despots.
  The time, Mr. Speaker, has long since passed when the United States 
should reexamine these fundamental policies toward the Communist 
dictatorship that rules the mainland of China. Our commercial policies 
as well as our diplomatic and military policies have for the past 
decade worked against the interests of our people and has not, as we 
had hoped, increased the level of freedom enjoyed by the Chinese 
people. In fact, after some initial progress, China has gone in the 
opposite direction, as I have just described, especially since the end 
of the Reagan administration and the tragic national reversal that took 
place in Tiananmen Square.
  The gentleman from Texas (Mr. Armey) defines insanity as doing more 
of the same and expecting to get different results. Here I have been 
describing it tonight. The same policies are being advocated over and 
over again, but yet these folks ask us to believe that this time 
around, there are going to be different results. I do not believe there 
will be different results if we continue this policy with Communist 
China. I believe our country will just be in more jeopardy and that in 
the end we will reach a threshold in our economic relationship with 
China where it causes great economic damage to our country as well as 
the national security damage, which is already becoming evident. It is 
at the least unreasonable, perhaps, and what we are talking about at 
the least is irrational optimism for these people to continue 
advocating this position.
  I think that it is up to us to advocate what we believe in, and I 
certainly respect people with different opinions. But the American 
people should pay close attention to the debate that is going on here 
tomorrow. We must understand that since this debate started 10 years 
ago, the genocide has continued in Tibet, the Chinese democracy 
movement was wiped out, and there has been an increasing belligerence 
of the guys who run-- the bully boys, I say, of Beijing--toward the 
United States, towards Taiwan, towards the Philippines.
  Now, big business falsely claims that China will be liberalizing 
through this commercial engagement. As I have said, there is no 
evidence of that. The evidence goes exactly the opposite direction. 
China, as we heard from the gentlewoman from California, is exporting 
its weapons technology to various rogue nations.
  Let me just add, as the chairman of the Subcommittee on Space and 
Aeronautics, I was shocked to find out that Communist China is aiding 
the North Koreans in their, quote, space efforts, in their space 
program. North Korea has a space program? Give me a break. North Korea 
has a space program? Here we are shipping North Korea hundreds of 
millions of dollars of foreign aid, our biggest recipient in Asia, and 
they are spending their money on a space program in which Communist 
China is taking the technology that they stole from us, or was given to 
them by our own aerospace firms, illegally, I might add, and they are 
building these rockets in the name of a space program.
  How many people who read this Congressional Record or listen tonight 
on C-SPAN believe that North Korea is really developing these rockets 
to launch civilian satellites but are not, which we know that probably 
is the case, that the North Koreans, with the Chinese help, are 
developing missiles in order to intimidate Japan and intimidate the 
democratic peoples in the Pacific, and unfortunately also to intimidate 
the United States because many of these rockets in North Korea and in 
China, thanks to our own companies, like Hughes and Loral, are now more 
capable of being more accurate in their targeting of American cities.
  What we have in our China policy is a catastrophe, a catastrophe for 
the United States of America in the making. We see this with the money 
that the Communist Chinese have left over, and as the gentlewoman from 
California said, what type of normal trade relationship is it when they 
have barriers to our goods and high tariffs to our goods and we let 
them ship all of their goods into our country with very little tariff? 
With the surplus that they have from that, they are in Panama, they are 
in North Korea, they are modernizing their weapons, they are creating 
havoc throughout the world and they are putting the world in a position 
where we could have a catastrophe in which millions of lives are lost 
and we could face a catastrophe where the United States is put in grave 
danger. It is in grave danger today. We must change that policy for a 
number of reasons.
  Let us go in now to what this means, what the policy is that we are 
talking about. Why is normal trade relations being proposed, then? Why 
do we have large financial interests who are pushing for that? If you 
examine what the trade is, what we have been talking about tonight, not 
only do we not have free trade, and the proponents will say, ``Well, 
we're free traders.'' My Republican colleagues will say, ``We're free 
traders.''
  Well, I am sorry that that is not free trade. We are not talking 
about free trade. There is no such thing as free trade when on one side 
of the trading partnership you have a country which permits in all of 
the goods imported from the other country at 3 percent tariffs and with 
very few restrictions and the other country, Communist China, putting 
barriers up and controlling who gets to come over and who gets to buy 
and sell in their market. You have got a controlled economy here and 
controlled trade on this side and relatively free and open trade over 
here. That is not a free trade equation. A free trade equation is when 
you have free trade on both sides. No, this is an equation that is a 
one-way free trade, one-way controlled trade equation. When you do it 
that way, you leave the outcome, the results, not to a free expression 
of the market between the countries but instead you leave it up to some 
gangsters who run a tyrannical regime in Beijing, you leave it to them 
as to what will be the results of that trade, because you have 
permitted them to manipulate it while leaving it somewhat open on our 
side.
  This is not about free trade. No, it is about managed trade on the 
side of the Communist Chinese regime so that they can get the $70 
billion surplus and they can channel money and power in China to their 
clique. We are actually

[[Page 17815]]

strengthening the dictatorship in Communist China by going along with 
this nonsense that they talk about of free trade, because it is not 
free trade.
  I personally believe in free trade. I would advocate it. It is called 
free trade between free people. If you do not have free trade between 
free people, it is a non sequitur, it does not exist, for a one-way 
free trade is not a free trade equation.

                              {time}  2310

  But then why are these companies here? If you take a look even to 
that degree of what we supposedly export to China, once you take a look 
at what those exports are, you know we have several think tanks in this 
town that have done studies of this, and I believe it was the Heritage 
Foundation that did the most extensive study and reported that there is 
almost no trade going on with China in which American products are 
manufactured here and sold to the people over there. That is not what 
is going on.
  Now you are going to have a lot of people come to this floor tomorrow 
who will be saying, oh, we have got to take advantage of the China 
market, we need its jobs for the people of the United States, and we 
have got to make sure that we do not let other people sell their 
products there when we should be selling American products.
  I hope people listen to those arguments because that argument is 
totally fallacious. What the facts are behind that argument is enough 
to curl your hair. What is being sold to China are not American 
products that are being produced in the United States and sold to the 
Chinese consumers. What is being sold there that makes this trade 
surplus on the part of the Chinese even worse is what we are selling to 
them are factories and technology, and we are building their industrial 
infrastructure so that, as my colleagues know, on our side of the 
equation what we are selling them is the long-term process and the 
long-term technology they will need to destroy us economically and 
militarily and in every other way. We are giving the Communist Chinese 
tens of billions of dollars, and in our side of the equation our people 
are making money not on selling commercial items to the Chinese and 
building their standard of living. We are selling them factories.
  I come from a very heavy aerospace area, and we sell airplanes to 
Communist China. But what the companies do not want you to know and do 
not want to focus on is that the Chinese are insisting if we buy your 
airplanes, you got to help set up airplane building factories in our 
country, and over the past 10 years we have set up almost an entire 
infrastructure in Communist China so that they can come back and put 
our aerospace workers out of work.
  Oh, that is only the first layer of this cake. The second layer is: 
What else is there in this? What are we talking about here when these 
businessmen go over there and are setting up those factories? The 
reason they must have normal trade relations or most favored nation 
status, as we used to call it, is so that they will be eligible for 
taxpayer subsidies. Now is this free trade?
  Now I heard the word ``subsidy'' mentioned here. I thought that I am 
a protectionist, that Rohrabacher and his gang are protectionists, and 
the other people are free traders. But where does subsidy come into the 
free trade equation? No, they have to have most favored nation status 
or normal trade relation status tomorrow, passed tomorrow, so that when 
a factory owner in the United States wants to close his factory, he 
will then be eligible if he wants to relocate it in Communist China to 
take advantage of slave wages over there, no unions, no freedom, no 
environmental controls. When he wants to do that and put our people out 
of work, he might need to get a loan. He might need to get a loan. 
Otherwise he would have to risk his own capital; and, my gosh, when you 
are doing that in a Communist country, that is a pretty bad risk.
  Now, if you give him most favored nation status or normal trade 
relations, he can get a guarantee through the Export-Import Bank or any 
number of financial institutions that can traced right back to the 
American taxpayers' pocket, and they will guarantee the loan or they 
will subsidize the interest rate. We are subsidizing and we are 
encouraging American businessmen to go to Communist China and build the 
industrial infrastructure to put our people out of work. That is what 
we are voting on tomorrow.
  Now we will be told that, no, we are voting on whether or not we are 
going to engage China or whether we are going to be able to trade with 
China. No, no. Let us ask. Everyone who hears that argument tomorrow, 
ask yourselves if this does not pass, will Americans be free too sell 
their goods in China? Of course they will. Americans will be able to 
sell their goods in China just as if they will be able to do it today.
  Unfortunately, the Chinese have those roadblocks, but the difference 
will be if an American industrialist wants to set up a plant in China, 
he is going to have to do so on his own risk. He is going to have to do 
so using his own money rather than the taxpayers' money. That is the 
difference. That is what we are voting on tomorrow.
  No wonder why these powerful interest groups want us to vote for most 
favored nation status, not normal trade relations. Of course they want 
to have the taxpayers pick it up, because they do not want to risk 
their money putting their money into a dictatorship.
  You know, I will tell you something about the American people. If it 
was not for the American people, there would not be any freedom on this 
planet. To the degree there is freedom anywhere on this planet and 
stability anywhere on this planet it is because guys like who went out 
to save Private Ryan went out and did it, because the American people 
believe in freedom and democracy and justice, believe in the type of 
honest and fair government, believe in democracy, believe in what 
Thomas Jefferson said, believe that rights belong to everyone.
  To the degree that we have gone all over the world and we have stood 
firm for those principles is to the degree freedom has succeeded around 
the world, and the American people, the American working people, 
deserve to have somebody watching out for their interests. They do not 
deserve to have some industrialist who says, oh boy, I can be here in 
the United States and make my money, and that is all because of the 
protection of these decent hard-working American people; but I am going 
to take that for granted, and I am going to go over there to Communist 
China, and I am going to invest over there because they know over in 
Communist China without some kind of guarantee their government is so 
corrupt and so tyrannical, this can be taken away from them, and it is 
only because of the decency and honor of the American people that we do 
not have that kind of oppression and instability here in our own 
country.
  But who are they hurting when they invest over there? And it is a 
slap in the face, they are investing over there, and they are using tax 
dollars from our own working people to guarantee those investments. 
Something is dreadfully wrong; something is dreadfully wrong.
  Now I do not deny that there are a lot of people who probably think 
that they are telling the story as they honestly believe it, and I am 
sure they must believe it. But how much longer can it go on and keep 
going in the opposite direction?
  We have a situation today where this, and this just happened the last 
2 weeks. As my colleagues know, we have been told things are getting 
better in China, and now all of a sudden tens of thousands of people 
who are just members of sort of a quasi-religious movement that they 
exercise in the parks. I have seen them. And it is a yoga-type of 
exercise. It is with Buddhism and Taoism put together, and these people 
and this movement, they have now been targeted, targeted by the 
Communist Chinese Party, and they are being arrested by the thousands.
  Now remember this. We have had people lobbying, lobbying this 
Congress for this upcoming vote tomorrow, telling us that we should 
vote for this because it is going to help the Christians, and the 
Chinese Communists have said one thing. They have said one thing.

[[Page 17816]]

Anybody can worship God in Communist China as long as you register with 
the state, sort of like the Nazis said to the Jews. You just have to 
register. Trust us, you will be okay. And now we have that same regime 
who Billy Graham and these others have told us we must, as my 
colleagues know, not deny them this trade status because it will hurt 
Christians, and all Christians have to do is register.
  We have had our own religious leaders over there encouraging them to 
register, to register with the government. On my, my, my. The history 
in Communist China, you have seen this happen time and again where you 
have people who are being coaxed out into the open, and then it will 
followed by repression.

                              {time}  2320

  Anybody who suggests to a Christian in China or a Muslim in the far-
off reaches of China to register with the government is doing a great 
disservice to our country and a great disservice to those people and a 
great disservice to the cause of human rights. Our country has to be 
the champion of human rights and believe in those fundamental values, 
or we are nothing. Those people themselves, their lives are on the 
line, and in terms of human rights, we have to have a standard of human 
rights where people can worship God without having to register and tell 
the government what faith they are.
  What has happened now? That argument has been underscored, 
underscored by this attack on what we call the Falung Gong, which is 
this movement that is under attack, because even a religious movement 
based on something that is entirely Chinese in culture is being 
attacked and brutalized in the worst possible way.
  Mr. Speaker, there is a real comparison about the days that we live 
in, and for those people who read history, I think it is time that we 
should read history about the time of what happened in Asia back in the 
1920s. There was another country back in the 1920s who thought, like 
China, that they were racially superior to all of the others. We had a 
country back in the 1920s in Asia who thought that they had the right 
to dominate all of Asia, this huge hunk of Asia; and they felt that 
they had the will to rule, and they were going to create a prosperity 
sphere, and everything would be out of one capital and unfortunately at 
that time it was Tokyo.
  The Japanese back in the 1920s had the same policies that we now have 
in Beijing. They had this image that they had history on their side and 
they had a right to dominate the planet. And the United States had 
people who wanted to trade with them. In fact, we traded. We sold them 
scrap metal, just like Lorel and Hughes traded them secrets for how to 
build their rockets.
  We had lots of commerce with the Nazis. We had industrialists telling 
us a lot of the same things about the Nazis, the same thing about the 
Japanese militarists. In the 1920s and the 1930s we let it go. And the 
Japanese knew one thing: there was only one country in their way, and 
it was the United States of America. They knew that, and the Communist 
Chinese clique that runs that country in Beijing knows that the United 
States of America is all that stands between them and dominating that 
region, and some day, mark my words, we will see a Chinese Communist 
move on central Asia and Kazakhstan and that area.
  We will see a move toward the north in Siberia and Manchuria. We will 
see a move to try to dominate the Pacific Basin. We already see that 
where they are trying to take these islands away from the Philippines, 
the Spratly Islands, and we will see a move into Southeast Asia. If we 
just give the Communist Chinese the idea that they can do anything and 
we will still give them this trade status, they can do anything and we 
will still call them our strategic partners, we are inviting the very 
worst elements in China to stay in power and to brutally maintain their 
control and to move forward with their plans, because we are a bunch of 
pansies and we are saps, that we will not even protect the interests of 
our own people.
  Yes, Mr. Speaker, it is time to change that policy before it is too 
late. We ended up in a war with Japan. We can prevent that with China. 
We must support the democratic elements in China, and we must not treat 
China as a democratic country; and we must make our alliances with the 
people rather than the clique that runs that country. It is up to us. 
We can make history. We do not have to relive the 1920s and 1930s 
again.
  But if we just blithely ignore reality, if we blithely ignore our 
country being treated in an unequal way and just ignore the fact that 
they are modernizing their military at our expense and that we come 
groveling to them with this unfair trading relationship that gives them 
all of the advantage and puts our own American people at a 
disadvantage, because who is representing their interests, the 
Communists that run China will not respect us. They will loathe us, 
they will treat us like the weak links we are, and we will pay a price. 
Unfortunately, we are already close to that.
  So tomorrow I would hope that people pay close attention to the 
debate, and it will be a spirited debate; and it will determine again 
the policies of the United States of America, because this is still a 
democratic country where the rule of law and the will of the people 
will prevail. It is just that we have to get the people active and 
involved in these issues.

                          ____________________