[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 147 (2001), Part 5]
[House]
[Pages 6119-6124]
[From the U.S. 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,

[[Page 6120]]

fostered this movement. Under President Reagan, we brought tens of 
thousands of students here, and we sent 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.

[[Page 6121]]

  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 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, 1 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 9 out of 10 would explode, now 
about 9 out of 10 get to their target, and some of them are carrying 
multiple warheads.

[[Page 6122]]

  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 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.

[[Page 6123]]

  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 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.

[[Page 6124]]

  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.
  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.

                          ____________________