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Due to the conspicuous lack of a Cox Report, read the following by Rep.Cox! Remarks of U.S. Rep. Christopher Cox To the Republican National Committee The Capitol Hilton Washington, D.C. January 22, 1999 As we meet, the U.S. Senate is conducting a trial of Bill Clinton that has eclipsed nearly all other discussion in the public square. But that is a shame, because it has permitted the Clinton-Gore policies-particularly their foreign policies-to go un-remarked upon, and largely unnoticed. Today-while the Senate argues whether to remove Bill Clinton from office for perjury and obstruction of justice-I will argue that at the next election America's voters should remove both Bill Clinton and Al Gore and their entire administration from office, for failing to protect the national security. Nowhere are the dangerous flaws of the Clinton-Gore foreign and security policies more clear than with the number one soft-money donor to the Clinton-Gore campaign, the People's Republic of China. The Clinton-Gore policy towards the PRC has been in place for half a decade. As a result, we are now in a position to judge whether the promised benefits from that policy have been achieved. Year after year, Bill Clinton and Al Gore have argued their policy will do four things: Supposedly, first, it will promote democratization and improvement in human rights. Second, it promised to move China more quickly towards free enterprise. Third, it is supposed to have increased China's willingness to import goods and services from the U.S. and the outside world. And fourth, it was supposed to have made the PRC less threatening to the U.S. and to our interests in the region. These four promises were reiterated by Clinton as recently as last summer's Beijing summit. But after half a decade, it is demonstrably clear that each has proven false. The most visible failure is in the area of the Communist Party's crackdown on political freedom and human rights. A little over a year ago-in front of Philadelphia's Independence Hall-Chinese Communist Party Secretary Jiang Zemin shamelessly wore a three-cornered hat for photographers, and talked of his respect for democracy. But back in Beijing, Jiang has made it clear that as long as he is alive, China will never have democracy. "The [Communist] system must not be shaken, weakened or discarded at any time," he said at a Communist Party anniversary in December. "The western mode of political systems must never be copied." When the Republican Party meets in Philadelphia next year to select the next candidate for President of the United States, we should keep in mind how China's Communist leader disgraced that shrine of freedom-and how the Clinton-Gore policy has rewarded his regime for doing so. In the last few months, Jiang Zemin's Communist Party has mounted nothing less than a full-scale dragnet against China's advocates of democracy. Neither Bill Clinton nor Al Gore has uttered a word of condemnation in the wake of the Communist government's crackdown. That crackdown actually began in the days before the Clinton trip to China. The day before Clinton arrived in China, a brave Chinese man, Wang Youcai, announced the formation of the Chinese Democratic Party. Such a positive step toward democracy should have been worthy of a visiting American President's notice. But Clinton declined to meet with Wang. Instead, he extolled Jiang Zemin as a "visionary"-and said he and his Communist Party are, and I quote, "the right leadership at the right time." The Communists heard Clinton's message loud and clear. After Clinton left Beijing, Wang and the other organizers of the Chinese Democratic Party were rounded up and jailed. Last October, the PRC signed the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Immediately afterward, the Communist government imposed new laws that deprive the Chinese people of the very freedoms that document guarantees. On October 25, the PRC tightened provisions for the registration and management of "Social Groups." These are the first new laws of this kind since the Tiananmen massacre ten years ago. They are aimed at binding all non-business organizations more tightly to the Communist Party. Wang Youcai was arrested again last November 30, along with two other democracy activists-Xu Wenli and Qin Yongmin. All three had carefully tried to operate within the letter of the law on Social Groups. Xu Wenli's daughter recently wrote in a New York Times op-ed: "My father hoped that China would adhere to the principles of [the Human Rights Covenant]." But instead the Communist Party moved swiftly against the Chinese Democratic Party. They brought Xu, Wang, and Qin to trial just one week before Christmas. They were all sentenced to more than 10 years in prison-for supposed "subversion," and the attempted "overthrow of state power." These courageous Chinese men apparently believed the rhetoric pouring out from the Clinton summit. As Robert Kagan commented recently in the New York Times, the crime these men really committed was "taking President Clinton at his word." The trials of the democratic organizers have attracted much-deserved attention. But the dragnet against democrats hasn't stopped. After Clinton's visit, underground church leaders and worshippers-more than 100-were arrested. Priests have been tortured. A labor activist in Hunan province was sentenced to 10 years in jail. The London-based Tibet Information Network has reported that the PRC's crackdown is so pervasive it has extended even to a remote monastery 600 miles from Tibet's capital, where the Communist government arrested five followers of the Dalai Lama. The Communist Party is also taking action against dissidents returning from overseas. Without a trial, the Communist Party recently sentenced two US-based activists of the Democracy and Justice Party, Zhang Lin and Wei Quanbo, to three years in a labor camp. On Wednesday , the PRC sentenced Lin Hai, a web page designer, for supposedly "inciting subversion of state power." His so-called "crime" consisted of exchanging e-mail addresses with an anti-Communist group here in America. It is important to note that of China's 1.2 billion people, only one one-thousandth are Internet users. But Internet use is growing at a rate that threatens the Communist leadership in Beijing. As a result, the PRC government is attempting to use an electronic "firewall" to block access to most portions of the Internet, including virtually all foreign news. The PRC wants advanced technology-but apparently only if that technology strengthens the Communist Party's control. Both Bill Clinton and Al Gore have remained deaf, silent, and blind when it comes to the PRC's repressive actions. But the Clinton-Gore administration has been more than willing to provide the Communist Party with an excuse for its actions whenever necessary. Dr. Susan Shirk-the Clinton Administration's top China policy official-actually testified to House International Relations Committee on Wednesday that the recent crackdown on political, economic, religious, and free speech rights in China is merely "a repressive cycle"- "reminiscent of earlier cycles in Chinese history." It makes one long for the era of Deng Xiao Ping, which was a relative relief from the devastating man-made disasters of Mao's "Great Leap Forward" and the Cultural Revolution. But now, the Communist Party is shelving the reforms of the Deng era. The Communist Party has abandoned Premier Zhu Rongji's ambitious plans to reform the financial sector, and to shut off life support for state-owned enterprises. Instead, the Communist Party now plans massive new state spending on government programs and state-controlled industries-even though, according to the Foreign Policy Research Institute, the PRC is already suffering from "negative returns, and non-performing loans." The rationale for these moves is purely ideological. The Communist Party fears that genuine economic liberalism would weaken its grip. The Clinton-Gore embrace of Jiang and the Communist Party, warts and all, is supposed to be the only way to help U.S. business export freely to China. But now, more than ever, the Communist dictatorship in Beijing is actively discouraging the purchase of foreign goods. According to Business Week, "new protectionist measures and currency controls by the Middle Kingdom are making it tougher for U.S. businesses to operate in China." Today, the PRC exports four times more to the United States than it imports (the US trade deficit with the PRC will probably surpass $60 billion in 1999). Even tiny Taiwan provides a bigger market for U.S. exports than does the world's largest Communist country, with a billion more people. But the Clinton-Gore security policy toward the PRC is the most bankrupt of all. It has undermined American influence and credibility in the region, and it threatens to destabilize the Asian military balance. It amounts to nothing less than a failed and craven attempt to purchase the goodwill of the ruling Communists, through the transfer of advanced technology and military exchanges that directly benefit the People's Liberation Army. A report released by the Pentagon in September 1998 reveals that the Peoples Liberation Army, the largest in the world, is leaping over generations of incremental technological advances. It is developing threatening capabilities in such high-tech areas as anti-satellite weapons and electro-magnetic weaponry. The report warned of PLA plans "to establish [military] control of space," and to "deny [American] access and use of [our] military and commercial space systems" in the event of conflict. It noted the PRC's pursuit of laser radar, advanced radar systems, and high-energy laser equipment to track satellites in low earth orbit. It also reported that the PLA may be developing jammers that can be used against U.S. GPS-that is, global positioning system-receivers. As you know, I served as chairman of the House Select Committee on U.S. National Security and Military/Commercial Concerns with the People's Republic of China. The Committee's report, approved unanimously by all the Republican and Democrat members, found that even as we speak, the PRC is engaged in a concerted campaign to steal militarily sensitive high-technology equipment and know-how that will endanger America's national security. The report addresses the PRC's use of legal loopholes in trade and export policies, as well as outright theft, to gain sensitive technology with military applications. Our committee is now engaged in an effort to declassify the entire 1,100-page report. Just 10 days ago, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright gave a toast to the Communist leadership of the PRC. She said that the Clinton policy has helped stop "nuclear proliferation, [and contributed to] stability on the Korean Peninsula." The fact is, however, the opposite is true. We need look no further than the PRC's horrific record as a proliferator of weapons of mass destruction, and the increasingly hostile and threatening attitude of North Korea, to see how miserably the Clinton-Gore China policy has failed to achieve these objectives. Clinton and Gore extoll the PRC's promise that it will stop exporting weapons exports to Iran. But when the PRC said it would halt its nuclear technology exports to Iran, it actually allowed North Korea to establish a surrogate trade instead. On July 21, 1998, Iran tested its Shahab-3 missile using North Korean No-dong technology. The PRC could have blocked North Korea's missile technology from going to Iran, but it chose not to do so. Now Iran's Shahab-3 missile directly threatens 30,000 U.S. military personnel serving in the Middle East. And in spite of Pakistan's dependency on the PRC's nuclear advice, the PRC did nothing to prevent (and everything to provoke) the nuclear arms race among China, India, and Pakistan. Beijing's ruling Communists looked the other way while North Korean engineers helped Pakistan developed a Ghauri missile, based on North Korea's No-dong technology. Pakistan's April 6 test of that missile was the last straw that pushed India to test nuclear devices on May 11 and 13. And just last August, the PRC chose not to use its decisive leverage with North Korea to restrain Kim Jong Il from testing a three-stage missile over Japan. Based on unclassified sources, it is safe to say that North Korea's missile technology may in fact have benefited from Chinese expertise. As a result of that August 31 missile test, Japan is now forced to invest in satellite reconnaissance and missile defense. Secretary Albright's claim in her toast-that North Korea is now more stable as a result of the Clinton-Gore policy toward the PRC-is nothing short of wild fantasy. Just before the New Year, Kim Jong Il's government publicly threatened to "plunge the damned U.S. territory into a sea of flame." Keep in mind that, in every prior administration, Kim Jong Il's Stalinist government-the most repressive regime on earth-was the last place to which America would send its taxpayer dollars for foreign aid. But under Bill Clinton and Al Gore, North Korea's government has been guaranteed $200 million in foreign aid-for fuel, food, and even nuclear plants that will produce weapons-grade plutonium. What these instances show-and there are many more-is that the Clinton-Gore policy has made a more dangerous world-and produced exactly the opposite results from those that Bill Clinton, Al Gore, and the liberal dreamers in their administration have naively hoped for. The Clinton-Gore policy is called engagement. But surely that is understatement for a policy that gives China's ruling Communists everything they want, and withholds all criticism and sanctions, no matter what. Surely there is a middle ground between the unnecessary isolation of China, on the one hand, and the kind of warm, wet kiss-up to the Communist dictatorship that-when administered by Clinton and Gore-can only be described as "the full Lewinsky." The more the Clinton-Gore administration talks of "strategic partnership" with China, the more we confuse our allies and friends. When we host the PLA's military generals in Washington, we send a signal to the democracies in Asia that they can't count on us. The more we give away technology for the PLA's war machine, the weaker Asian democracy gets. The more we subsidize the Communist regime, the less it needs to promote economic reform. The more that appeasement is the watchword of our dealings with Beijing, the more we discourage China's advocates for democracy. The record by now is unequivocal: instead of democratization, China's people are suffering the harshest crackdown since Tiananmen Square. Instead of free-market reforms, the ruling Communist Party has begun a vast new push to underwrite moribund state enterprise-and exclude U.S. exports. Instead of security cooperation, the world has gotten a costly arms race, and covert campaigns to undermine America's alliances in the region. Even while the Communist rulers in China cynically profit from the Clinton-Gore policy, they recognize its foolishness. We should do no less.
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