This could do it:
Rohrabacher Slams U.S. Aid to China
Rep. Dana Rohrabacher
Thursday, April 26, 2001
Editor's note: This is the text of a speech on the House floor by U.S. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., Tuesday night.
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'
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 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.
'Tanks to Wipe Out the Opposition'
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?
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.
(cont)
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