U.S. Dept. of State - IIP: The United States and China

Text: Rohrabacher Urges Support for Resolution to Deny China NTR
(Calls China an "emerging superpower")

Representative Dana Rohrabacher (Republican of California) July 10 urged the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Trade to back a resolution he submitted in June, House Joint Resolution 50 (H.J. Res. 50), which would deny a renewal of China's Normal Trade Relations (NTR) status.

Rohrabacher, who led the fight in the House of Representatives against granting China Permanent Normal Trade Relations status in the 106th Congress, warned that China was an "emerging superpower" made strong by Western trade and investment.

Rohrabacher made his plea before Trade Subcommittee Chairman Philip Crane (Republican of Illinois), who led the fight for granting China PNTR status last year and who is seeking to get a renewal of China's NTR status in the 107th Congress.

Rohrabacher in prepared testimony for the Trade panel criticized the Beijing regime for what he termed "massive" human rights violations.

Statement of Hon. Dana Rohrabacher
Member of Congress, California
Testimony Before the Subcommittee on Trade
of the House Committee on Ways and Means

Hearing on Renewal of Normal Trade Relations with China
July 10, 2001

I have introduced House Joint Resolution 50, a resolution disapproving the extension of the President's waiver on the "Jackson-Vanik" provision in the Trade Act of 1974. My reason for this resolution is a matter of national security as well as massive violations of human rights by an emerging superpower. During the past twelve months, despite previous Presidential waivers, the communist Chinese have used their $80 billion annual trade surplus with the United States to further modernize its military and boost its nuclear force targeting America and our friends in Taiwan, Japan and India. In addition to intensified campaigns to crack-down on religious believers independent of state controlled organizations, freedoms of press and speech have been thoroughly suppressed.

The sad reality is that increased Western investment and U.S. taxpayer subsidized transfers of U.S. industries for near-slave labor conditions in Communist China has only strengthened the grip of the Beijing despots and corrupt "princelings" who dominate the state-controlled economy. Rather than changing China, it is America that has changed our owned standards in support of freedom and against arming potential nuclear-armed adversaries. I believe in free trade - among free people, and not subsidizing American corporations to invest in lawless one-party states where it is a prisonable offense to make public economic statistics and where private U.S. banks and insurance companies won't back loans.

Despite negotiations over entry to the World Trade Organizations and their bidding to host the 2008 Olympic games, last week Beijing sent home in pieces the U.S. military aircraft that they forced down from international airspace and demanded $1 million from our government for the cost of their unlawfully detaining the U.S. air crew. The pugnacious Beijing bullies have no fear that this august body will reconsider our illogical subsidies and massive investment into their despotic regime. This week our media revealed shocking news of at least ten more Falun Gong meditators, including women, perishing in a prison labor camp after severe torture. Jiang Zemin has again threatened military conquest of democratic Taiwan.

On July 8, a Washington Post editorial stated: "Beijing appears prepared to press on with repression even while demanding that the world accept it as an Olympic host and World Trade Organization member. The list of offenses grows... a larger crackdown on free thought has included the shutting down of Internet cafes and independent-minded newspapers and arresting dissidents. There is the continuing campaign against religion... There is the massive use of the death penalty. Amnesty International says more people have been executed in China during the past three months - 1,781 - than in all the rest of the world during the past three years." And there was compelling testimony recently in this House by witnesses of the macabre business practice of Chinese officials harvesting the organs of freshly executed prisoners. After World War II, most American leaders said "never again" would we ignore Nazi-style tactics by any regime on this planet. How soon some people forget the tragic lessons of recent history.

Mr. Chairman, I request permission to enter into the record the copy of the cover story of the July 9, 2001 New Republic magazine, titled "Why Trade Won't Bring Democracy to China," by Lawrence F. Kaplan. I urge my colleagues to read this devastating historical and contemporary study of how our trade and subsidy policies have strengthened the brutal Beijing regime without bringing about any substantial democratic reforms or temperance of their systematic human rights abuses.

I urge my colleagues to stand up for American values and international freedom by supporting House Joint Resolution 50.

(Distributed by the Office of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)