Congressional Record: June 8, 1999 (House)
Page H3847-H3855
INTRODUCTION OF LEGISLATION TO DENY COMMUNIST CHINA NORMAL TRADE RELATIONS STATUS The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 6, 1999, the gentleman from California (Mr. Rohrabacher) is recognized for 60 minutes. Mr. ROHRABACHER. Madam Speaker, first of all, I would like to commend my colleague, the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Weldon). We have worked together over these last 10 years while I have been a Member of Congress on many, many occasions, and I find Congressman Weldon to be a patriot, a man of integrity, a man of courage, and I think when all of this is said and done, when we find out the jeopardy that our country has been put in and take the measures that are necessary to correct this situation and to make our country safe again, the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Weldon) will be on the list of real American heroes that came about to save the day, and I am just proud to serve with him. Madam Speaker, tonight it is fortuitous that I will be speaking after the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Weldon) because my remarks are in parallel with what Mr. Weldon has been talking about. It goes into a slightly different subject. Tonight I will be talking about Most Favored Nation status and our economic, as well as military and diplomatic, relations with China. But of course everything that Mr. Weldon has said today amplifies the need that I will be demonstrating for us to reexamine American policy towards Communist China. In fact, let me state right at the beginning that when it comes to Communist China, we have been treating a hostile power, the world's worst human rights abuser, as a strategic partner, that is what this administration has insisted on us calling Communist China, and I believe that Americans will pay a woeful price for this irrational, amoral and greed-driven policy if we do not change it, and that is what we need to do to change that policy that has been in place to some degree or another for 2 decades, but especially in these last 6 years. Yesterday I introduced legislation to do just that, to change that policy. It is a bill of disapproval of extending so-called ``normal trade relations,'' which was previously known as Most Favored Nation status, with Communist China. So what my proposal is is that we deny Communist China normal trade relations status with the United States, formerly called Most Favored Nation status. The time, Madam Speaker, is long since past when the United States should reexamine its fundamental policies toward the Communist dictatorship that now rules the mainland of China. Our commercial policies, as well as our diplomatic and military policies, for the past decade have worked against the interests of our own people and have not, as we had hoped, increased the level of freedom enjoyed by the Chinese people. In fact, some of the initial progress that we saw in China has now gone in the opposite direction, especially since the end of the Reagan administration and the tragic national reversal in China in 1989 at Tiananmen Square when they had the massacre at Tiananmen Square. The gentleman from Texas (Mr. Armey), one of our Republican leaders here in the House, defines ``insanity'' as doing more of the same, but expecting the results to be different. Well, for 10 years the cause of freedom in China has been in decline. Things are getting worse. So much for the engagement theory, the strategy of engagement, and what we hear from those people advocating normal trade relations and to continuing our relations with China is doing more of the same, but expecting that China is going to be different, that there will be different results now. Well, that makes no sense. It is the unreasonable and perhaps irrational optimism of some people to assume that continuing our fundamental policies toward China will bring about different results than the retrogression that we have seen in the past decade. In the past 10 years, the genocide, for example, has continued in Tibet. The Chinese democracy movement has been wiped out, and there has been increasing belligerence by the clique that runs China. The Beijing regime is modernizing and expanding its military power while threatening the United States and bullying its neighbors, especially in Taiwan and the Philippines. Big business falsely claims that China is a country that is liberalizing through commercial engagement. There is no evidence for that claim. So every time you hear it: Well, we have got to engage them, that is what will make them better; just be aware that there is every evidence to show just the opposite. In fact, the empirical evidence shows that China is going in the opposite direction, that engagement is not making things better, is not causing a freer China, but instead for the last 10 years has resulted in more repression, more militarization. Furthermore, the trade relationship is working against the people of the United States. So here we are in an economic engagement that is not helping us bring about a freer China, thus, less belligerent, thus a China that will be more peaceful. It is not doing that, but it is also not even helping us economically. {time} 2245 The Chinese are using their $60 billion annual trade surplus with us to modernize their Armed Forces, including building nuclear missiles aimed at the United States, and they are continuing to proliferate weapons of mass destruction. For example, Communist China is reported to be the power behind North Korea's space program. Get into that. North Korea has a space program. This is a country that has people who are starving by the thousands, that we are giving millions of dollars worth of food aid to, but they have a space program? You got it. Communist China is helping the North Korean regime with a so-called space program. In other words, they are helping them build [[Page H3848]] rockets that, when tested, end up flying right over Japan and land close to Alaska. North Korea, of course, is not the only looney country Communist China is helping along with deadly weapons technology. You have got Iran, Libya, Pakistan, all have benefitted from Beijing's helping hand. Of course, some of the technology now being handed over is technology based on things that they have stolen, on ideas and engineering techniques that they have stolen from the United States of America. On April 15 the Washington Post cited a Pentagon study that verified China is continuing to ship weapons of mass destruction technology to the Middle East and South Asia, despite repeated promises to end such activity. A separate U.S. intelligence report found that China has recently provided North Korea with specialty steel used in the building of missile frames. However, the State Department officials, including Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, have repeatedly avoided answering questions before the House Committee on International Relations hearings when asked about China's ongoing proliferation activities. When Secretary Albright was in China last summer with the President, China conducted its first successful test of a motor for its new DF-31 ballistic missile that can strike the United States from the Chinese mainland. So here was the President of the United States, so eloquent in his presentation, there he was representing us, along with Secretary of State Albright, supposedly representing our interests. They were aware that this new missile engine was being tested, a missile engine that could threaten the people of the United States. They were also aware that weapons technology had been stolen from the United States that would permit Communist China to build warheads, nuclear warheads, that would be on the top of those new rockets, and these rockets could strike the United States. Yet there was no record of the Secretary of State or President Clinton raising this issue with their Chinese hosts. Instead, they continued on that visit to praise the increasingly, I would say increasingly brazen communist leaders, as being strategic partners, strategic partners, and the type of people that we can do business with. This is very sad. It is more than sad, it is frightening. The recent Pentagon report describes how Chinese Government owned companies are selling weapons technology and knowhow and providing training to countries such as Iran and Pakistan. An American military official familiar with the report said that the Chinese are skirting nonproliferation treaties with the United States. So they have agreed not to proliferate. This was the President's great accomplishment, supposedly, with Communist China. We were going to give them all sorts of things in trade benefits so they would not proliferate, yet we know now they are proliferating and developing weapons of their own and giving them to these hostile and somewhat crazy states, states that are lacking in positive and responsible leadership. But Communist China is shipping them these weapons of mass destruction technology anyway, even though they have made these agreements. The Chinese are shipping these rogue nations missile components, some of which, of course, are American products as well as American knowhow, and they are shipping the components rather than shipping the whole missile. That way they are saying they are not really proliferating missiles to these other countries. But they are. They are proliferating on a routine basis, of course, without technically breaking the agreements with the United States, by just sending the parts to the missile. This nefarious behavior could be, we might call it the Mandarin version of a famous Arkansas homily, ``smoke, but don't inhale.'' After reading the Cox report, one is struck by the mind-boggling loss of our country's most deadly secrets. When you hear the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Weldon) explain the magnitude of the loss that we have seen, it takes your breath away and makes you wonder how our children will live, what type of lives they will live, whether or not America could be incinerated by a Chinese dictatorship that feels it can afford to lose hundreds of millions of people if it means wiping out its enemy, 100 or 200 million Americans. The theft of U.S. nuclear secrets by Communist China is surpassed only by the complete abandonment of security precautions at our Department of Energy under the Clinton Administration, as well as a brazen attempt by the Clinton Administration to keep the knowledge of this catastrophic transfer of weapons technology, to keep the news of this from the Congress and the American people. On May 30, the New York Times reported the utter cynicism and duplicity of the Clinton administration concerning our nuclear weapons programs. After the Cox committee released its report on Chinese espionage at our nuclear labs, Bill Clinton called protecting atomic secrets ``a solemn obligation.'' That is what President Clinton called it. However, in private, administration officials told reporters, and this is reported by the New York Times, that openness, a euphemism for giving away our nuclear secrets, has its advantages, despite the risks, and has been a potent force for international good. Hazel O'Leary, who the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Weldon) has also quoted and talked about some of her policies, in fact Mr. Weldon was right on target and this will even add to what Mr. Weldon was saying, Hazel O'Leary, President Clinton's Secretary of Energy from 1993 to 1997, was the grand poobah of nuclear openness, as we have seen by what Mr. Weldon told us this evening. In fact, she massively declassified secrets and put them on the Energy Department's web site, including the diagrams of some advanced nuclear weapons which we saw tonight in Mr. Weldon's presentation. When asked about that recently, Mrs. O'Leary said, ``we pulled off an impossible feat,'' and she recently boasted this while defending her action. She went on, ``To say that all of our efforts were negative is not to understand the benefits, not to see what we did in terms of building international trust.'' See, the idea is if everybody had all this information, information about deadly weapons technology that we had spent hundreds of billions of dollars developing, that if everyone had it, well then, it might be a more peaceful world. This is worse than the Rosenbergs. This is looney tunes. This is someone who has a fanatical anti-American altitude in a position to hand over to our worst enemies secrets that put our young people and our country in jeopardy. Needless to say, most defense experts obviously disagree with Mrs. O'Leary's bizarre, and I would say strange, logic. It takes more than a postgraduate degree from an ivy league school to have logic like this. However, O'Leary could not have undertaken this massive giveaway of a decade of brilliant and costly weapons research that permitted the United States to be the arsenal of democracy, she could not have done this without at least the tacit support of the Commander in Chief. The New York Times surmised that the new age defense policy emanating from the White House explains why Mrs. O'Leary did this. It explains also the administration's slow response when confronted with very real evidence of Chinese spying and the loss of blueprints for frighteningly powerful weapons. In 1993, O'Leary told a news conference at the start of the openness process, ``The United States must stand as a leader. We are declassifying the largest amount of information in the history of our department.'' O'Leary also did away with a counterintelligence effort, security badges and effective security clearances. She eliminated all of these, as Mr. Weldon alluded to a few moments ago. Remember the promise to reinvent government? Remember that promise? Well, this is it. This administration reinvented our government policy towards its labs. You might say they turned our nuclear labs into a high-tech K-Mart, I guess in Arkansas you might say Wal-Mart, in terms of the giving away or making available to international missile technicians and spies information that we invested billions of dollars to develop. This was not a going-out-of-business sale on the part of the United States Government; this was a going-out-of-sanity sale on the part of the United [[Page H3849]] States Government. Those who benefitted the most were the minions of the People's Republic of China, the Communist Chinese, our erstwhile constructive strategic partners. Madam Speaker, I yield to my friend from Arizona. Mr. HAYWORTH. Madam Speaker, I want to thank my friend from California and our colleague from Pennsylvania (Mr. Weldon) who preceded us in the well of the House. If there have been two among the 435 honored to serve in this chamber, it has been the gentleman from Pennsylvania and the gentleman from California who, together, have sounded the clarion call to the extent of the threat which affects our national security. Madam Speaker, I was honored earlier today to bring to this floor a measure that deals with the educational security of rural America, and it is worth noting that there was not a single member of this House present who voted against the legislation for the New Education Land Grant Act. Madam Speaker, I said at that time, this is an issue that affects us not as Republicans or as Democrats, but as Americans. Madam Speaker, the full House assembled worked its will in bipartisan fashion. How sad it is, Madam Speaker, to see what transpires in this town via smoke and mirrors and spin, when we are dealing with a problem that threatens the security of every American; to read in the Little Rock Democrat Gazette from one columnist that this is some form of red scare, to have those hurl verbal brickbats at a clear and present danger to the United States. As my colleague from California no doubt experienced during the district work period, Madam Speaker, I heard from countless constituents, from those who had borne the brunt of battle, from those who had worn the uniform of our country in peacetime and in war, from those who were concerned citizens, asking, what is this Chinese connection? What is this notion of a strategic partnership that would involve illegal political donations to those who would occupy our highest offices in the executive branch, what would possess business leaders to so jeopardize American security to grant technological prowess to the Communist China, and why would there be those within the administration who would turn a deaf ear and a blind eye to the theft of our most precious secrets? {time} 2300 As my colleague from California pointed out, why would there be cabinet officials who had a curious notion of utopia who would open our national labs, expose our national secrets, create an environment in which an employee at Los Alamos could put on an unsecured computer our legacy codes, the width and breadth of American nuclear knowledge and technological knowhow to fall into the hands of any foreign power, but especially the Communist Chinese? And how, Madam Speaker, could we have an Attorney General, given the number of wiretaps for national security that were authorized, fail to authorize the two wiretaps involving one Wen Ho Lee, the accused assailant who would surrender our nuclear secrets to the Communist Chinese? Again, Madam Speaker, as my colleague, the gentleman from California, as our friend, the gentleman from Pennsylvania, so eloquently pointed out, this is not a matter of being Republican or Democrat, this is not a matter of preening and posturing for the latest spin cycle. Indeed, Madam Speaker, this goes to the core of our national security and the security of every American family and our place in the world, and those who would oppose us and use our technology against us. That is what we deal with. Mr. ROHRABACHER. Madam Speaker, perhaps the most disturbing part of this whole controversy is the response that we have had from people who are trying to protect the administration from being held accountable for certain things dealing with this controversy. For example, I heard in a committee hearing, those of us who were complaining about this were accused of vulgar partisanship, as if in bringing this up we were doing this out of partisan concerns. I certainly explained at that point that the only thing vulgar and the only vulgar partisanship going on was that certain people on the other side felt compelled to have to try to block those of us who were trying to investigate this, trying to hold those who have committed this sin against the American people accountable, claiming that we were being partisan in doing so. Even today we hear people who are apologists for this, and this has to be labeled a national security catastrophe of a magnitude that we have yet to experience. Even the Rosenberg catastrophe, where Josef Stalin got his hands on the first nuclear weapon, that was horrible, that was a bad thing. That affected the entire Cold War. It probably led to the war in Korea. But that probably was not as bad for our long- term national security as what has happened here. But we are told even now by these people who are trying to say that, well, it is not really that bad, and how many times will we hear someone say, we spy, our allies spy, everybody spies, so how can we blame China? Yes, in a way, how can we blame China? We have to blame the incompetence or culpability of people in our government to let this happen. But let me point out, it is not the same when Great Britain or Belgium or Italy or a democratic country spies on us. If Great Britain were to receive these benefits of all of this research that we have had into these terrible weapons systems, no one would worry. It would not be a big problem. We would not like it, but it is a democratic country. Great Britain is not aiming its weapons at the United States. We cannot perceive and conceive of a situation where they will. But what we are talking about when someone says that, well, we spy, they spy, everybody spies, what they are talking about is a moral equivalency argument. This is the same moral equivalency argument that says there is nothing, no difference between a democracy and a vicious dictatorship. What this leads to is this, this leads to the type of actions that were taken by Mrs. O'Leary there at the beginning of the administration and probably consistent with the President's world theory that you can just shovel all this information out so every country can have it, regardless if they are a dictatorship or a democracy, and it will not make any difference. It is more likely, and this is the motive here if you have a moral equivalency argument, we can then let all of this information out and we can build a world authority, and perhaps that was the goal. Two things we should know about, moral equivalency and globalism. Moral equivalency and globalism, that is a formula for tyranny. It is a formula for the destruction of the United States of America. There is nothing morally equivalent about a democratic country that protects the rights of its people, permits people to worship as they see fit. And yes, we are not perfect, but we have freedom of speech, and where we have imperfections, we can work together and we can try to make things better. But when there is a corrupt official, those who complain are not shot, like they are in Communist China. They are not thrown into a Lao Gai prison system. There is no moral equivalency between dictatorship and a democratic government, especially the United States of America. It is this leftist concept that probably led Ms. O'Leary, Secretary O'Leary, to give this information out. Now it is being used right in front of our eyes to say, well, spies here, spies there, everybody spies. That is a fallacious argument. A country that is a dictatorship, unlike a country that is a democracy, cannot be a trusted partner of the United States and a friend of the United States. If we do so, if we put our faith in dictators and gangsters and people who commit these types of heinous abuses against their people, we will pay an awful price. We are paying that price today. Our administration continues to call it a strategic partner. I yield to the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Hayworth), and then I will give some reasons why China cannot be a strategic partner of the United States. Mr. HAYWORTH. Madam Speaker, I would thank my colleague from California, who eloquently establishes the dynamic and the challenge which we [[Page H3850]] confront as a Nation. Thank God that we are a constitutional republic with rights guaranteed by the first amendment. To those who would abridge those rights, to those who would turn a jaundiced eye to the abuses of others abroad, to those who would dare describe repressions, totalitarian regimes as strategic partners, it is time for a little straight talk. I know my colleague is familiar with the work of Bill Gertz, the Washington Times national security reporter who has authored a comprehensive evaluation of the extent to which our secrets have been stolen and leaked to hostile Nations. The name of the book is entitled ``Betrayal.'' I would say not only does Communist China present a problem, but North Korea, Pakistan, Iraq, Iran, those nations with whom the Communist Chinese have shared the nuclear technology reaffirms the fact that even in this alleged post-Cold War era, the world remains a dangerous place. One other note I would point out to my colleague from California, Madam Speaker. When we assemble here in early January of the odd- numbered year every 2 years to take our oath of office, we take our oath of office to the Constitution of the United States. We heard the President and Vice President take a similar oath, to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States; not the U.N. charter, not the NATO charter, not a utopian notion of a strategic partnership, but our allegiance is to our Constitution, to our sovereignty and to our legitimate national interest. How tragic it is that it appears those national security interests have been bartered away for campaign contributions, or naively given away for global considerations. Mr. ROHRABACHER. Madam Speaker, I would like to go through a few reasons of why China is not our strategic partner. People have to understand, there is a lot of rhetoric about China being the worst human rights abuser. People do not understand the specifics of what we are talking about. What we have here is the world's largest dictatorship. According to Amnesty International, there are thousands of political prisoners who remain even today in the Lao Gai forced labor camps, which are a prison system where you have basically slave labor. Sometimes these are just, as we say, thousands of political prisoners who are making some of these low-cost items, and this suit did not come from China. {time} 2310 But perhaps the suit worn by someone who is reading this Congressional Record or listening tonight is made in China. One must remember that that suit might have been made by someone who simply was a religious believer who was thrown into a prison system and forced for decades to work as a slave laborer because of his or her faith. There are at least 2,000 persons in prison for so-called counterrevolutionary crimes. Some 200 Tiananmen Square protesters, after 10 years, are still in prison for peacefully participating in pro democracy protests. During the past 2 months, the Chinese Communist government has issued new laws, this is just the last 2 months, that strengthen the Communist party and further restrict freedom of speech and the formation of political parties. Genocide continues in Tibet where hundreds of thousands have perished since the invasion of 1950. China's own statistics show that, during the 1959 freedom uprising in Tibet 87,000 Tibetans were ``eliminated.'' Today the Tibet Information Center in London cites at least 183 political prisoners at the end of 1998, including 246 women. The Physicians of Human Rights have reported the brutal torture of Tibetan political prisoners by their Chinese jailers, and this torture by their Chinese jailers is rampant. The Chinese Government has recently issued a new law in Tibet eliminating religion in and promoting Marxism. This is the Chinese Government in Beijing that has kidnapped this young religious leader who would then take the seat of the Dalai Lama someday if he is still alive. What monstrous regime would take a little child who is nothing more than a pacifist religious loader, a figure of pacifism and a religion of Buddhism, and take him away and perhaps murder him. On May 29, the South China Morning Post Newspaper reported that, since March, Beijing has deployed extra troops to tighten control over Tibet. In addition, they have recruited former People's Liberation Army troops from China to migrate to Tibet to act as sort of a civil guard to assure China's control of Tibet by force. So here we are, here we are fighting and spending tens of billions of dollars to try to thwart ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, but we are calling the Communist Chinese regime our strategic partners when they are engaged in ethnic cleansing every bit as brutal and every bit as tyrannical as what is going on in Kosovo. When some people claim that China is not a threat to its neighbors, they conveniently forget that when Mao Tse Tung conquered China in 1950, Tibet was a sovereign country with its own language, its own religion, and its own culture. There is no difference, as I say, between China's occupation and the genocide of Tibet than Japan's brutal occupation and the ethnic cleansing of Manchuria in the 1930s. The United States tried to pretend at that time in the 1930s that the Japanese were not committing an aggression. They had hoped that by trade and finance that the Japanese would be able to be turned, that the presence of Japanese students at our colleagues and universities, that dancing the Charleston would help the Japanese turn a different way, that Japan would be our friend with this type of engagement. In 1941, these delusions lead to the tragedy of Pearl Harbor. Given the lethal power of today's weapons of mass destruction, we would not have the luxury of months to build up our Navy and our military and our Air Force to respond to a devastating surprise attack by China's so- called asymmetrical warfare plans. In the Xinjiang region, in the far regions known as East Turkestan, that is Xinjiang, the suppression of religion, and that is the Muslim religion and political arrests and executions parallel the systematic brutality in Tibet. In 1999, Amnesty International documented 190 executions of political prisoners in that province after unfair and summary trials. The report also cites 200 political prisoners known to be detained at this time with arbitrary arrests continuing. Whether it is Tibet or in East Turkestan, while the local populations continue to decline, part through forced abortion, part through sterilization, ethnic Chinese, as I have stated, the ethnic Chinese are moving in. Hordes of them are coming in and establishing these areas as colonies, as resource-rich territories. China is making major military moves, not only on the continent of Asia, but is moving towards places like the Spratley Islands, bullying our regional democratic allies, such as the Philippines and Indonesia, and threatening the vital sea lanes of the South China Sea. There are some people who claim that it is wrong to compare the Communist Chinese to Hitler and the Natzis. I agree maybe that that comparison is not right. But I do believe that there is a more accurate comparison; and that is, the Communist Chinese should be compared to the militaristic regimes in the Japanese era of the 1920s, perhaps the regimes of Tojo and Yamamoto. What was the goal of the Japanese in the 1920s? They believed themselves to be racially superior. They believed they had a right to dominate Asia and to conquer the Pacific. It is ironic that, in less than 10 years before the attack in Pearl Harbor, that Admiral Yamamoto attended graduate school in the United States at Harvard University and as a student in the United States was made aware of many American military strategies. The Spratley Islands lie close to the coast of the Philippines, Malaysia, and Indonesia. China is now building fortifications on these atolls and reefs while it builds up a blue water navy and a submarine force. Ironically, there has been no militarization of these islands, the Spratley Islands, since the Japanese used them as stationery aircraft carriers during the early stages of World [[Page H3851]] War II. The Spratleys were turned in at that time, they were turned into military bases in preparation to invade the Philippines. It was incredibly eerie last December, on the eve of Pearl Harbor Day, when my special assistance Al Santoli and my good friend Jeff Baxter toured the battlefield and the tunnels of Corrigedor right outside of Manila. And on this pleasant tropical mountainous island, American military men and women held out as their ammunition ran out and they held out against overwhelming Japanese occupation force. In fact, my wife's Uncle Lou was captured by the Japanese in the Philippines. He was part of the Bataan Death March where he saw innocent civilians being bayoneted and horrible human rights abuses and abuses and horrible things that happened to those American prisoners. That was what happened because of our policy in the 1920s, ignoring what was going on in Japan. That was our policy of engagement with the Japanese, just as our policy is now to the Communist Chinese; and they have the same dream the Japanese had, dominating Asia and the Pacific basin. Two days later after my visit to Corrigedor, my friends and I, including Filipino Congressman Roy Golez, a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy flew over the Spratley Islands in an antiquated Philippine air force C-130, which is around 150 miles from the Philippines over to the South China Sea. We dropped out of a thick monsoon cloud cover to about 500 feet over the Spratleys over an outcropping called Mischief Reef. In that lagoon at Mischief Reef, within this oval-shaped reef, there were three large Chinese warships. I witnessed hundreds of Chinese construction workers with sparks flying off their welding torches, building permanent military structures on that reef 150 miles off the coast of the Philippines, and bracketing the South China Sea and all of the routes, the trading routes that go through there. Half or three-quarters of the Japanese trade goes through those areas, that trading route, that waterway. Within 2 months after that flight, Congressman Golez sent me new photos showing me a three-story Chinese concrete command and control building on the very site that we overflew. This grab of territory and this bullying of the Philippines is a warning we ignore at our own peril. Again, it is time to fundamentally change our policies toward the Communist Chinese government that controls the mainland of China. We are not talking about isolating China. Those claiming that we are trying to isolate China are setting up a false dichotomy. We are talking about a rational policy towards a hostile dictatorship, not an isolationist policy of ignoring overseas threats. In fact, those of us who are advocating to have a strong and forceful policy toward China, we are exactly the opposite of those who want to overlook Communist Chinese aggressions. {time} 2320 Those are the ones who are more akin to the isolationists of the past. In fact, they are relying on wishful thinking instead of making the tough decisions that are necessary to avert war. We are the realists. We are not isolationists. We are the ones who are asking for a policy that makes sense when confronting a dictatorship. And dictators do not respect weakness. They respect strength, they respect purpose, they respect people who watch out for their own interests. I introduced a resolution, as my colleague is aware. I introduced this resolution yesterday and it is a resolution of disapproving the annual extension of normal trade relations, formerly Most Favored Nation status, and we would disapprove that. That is what my resolution states. And this is not intended to isolate China. Instead, it sends Beijing a direct message that the United States will not stand by and let them bully their neighbors and we will stand, instead, for our own Democratic principles, and we will protect the economic as well as the military interests of our country. And when we talk about our country, we are not just talking about a small business elite, a clique of billionaires who make a short-term profit at a time when the economic policies are hurting us economically and the military consequences are overwhelming. Madam Speaker, I yield to my colleague, the gentleman from California. Mr. OSE. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from California, and I am particularly pleased to be here with my good friend in the Speaker's chair. I do not speak often on the floor, and I welcome the chance to come down today. I, in particular, was sitting in my office listening this evening to the discussion on the floor and I thought of the Cox report that I have been reading, traveling back and forth to my district, and in volume I, on page XXIV, it talks about the basis from the Reagan years for the reaching out to China; that having been a decision on our part here in the United States to use our relationship with the People's Republic of China as a strategic offset in the Cold War with the Soviet Union and also to buttress our ability to launch space-based vehicles. The determination of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, and as noted here in the Cox report, again on page XXIV in volume I, is that that decision, contrary to what people might hear bandied about by many of our colleagues, no longer is applicable; that the consequence or the necessity of having Red China as an offset to the Soviet Union no longer exists because the Soviet Union no longer exists. So the strategic underpinning of our commercial interaction with China has evaporated. The reason I bring that up, is that in that same document, on XVIII, it talks about two companies in particular who have engaged in significant commercial interaction with the PRC, having to do with their missile defense and development programs, those being Hughes and Loral, and I just wanted to read to my colleagues some of the verbiage that was agreed upon by the bipartisan China commission that the gentleman from California (Mr. Cox) chaired, for the record, having to do with multiple independent reentry vehicles; having to do with accident investigation techniques; having to do with testing, modeling and simulation, hardware design and manufacture of these ballistic missiles. I quote. ``In both 1993 and '95, Hughes failed to apply for or obtain the required Department of State licenses for its activities, because Hughes knew that the Department of State would be unlikely to grant the license and that the licensing process would in any case be lengthy.'' It goes on to say, and keep in mind this is a bipartisan unanimous report, ``Hughes also engaged in deliberate efforts to circumvent the Department of State licensing requirement.'' Now, this is the part that I almost went myself ballistic on the airplane over. ``To this end, Hughes sought the approval of a Department of Commerce official for its 1995 activities and claims to have sought the approval of a Department of Defense monitor for some of its 1993 activities, although Hughes knew that neither official was legally authorized to issue the required license.'' They knew. This goes on. And it is not just Hughes, it was also Loral. Same page, page XIX, volume I of the Cox report, and these are not my words, this is a bipartisan unanimous writing of the report, ``Loral and Hughes deliberately acted without the legally required license and violated U.S. export control laws.'' This has to do with our most sensitive equipment, dealing with intercontinental ballistic missiles, targeted potentially on the United States. Where does this lead? Where does this lead? Where is the administration? Again, this is not put out with any singularity. This is a bipartisan report, a unanimously accepted report of the Cox commission. Mr. ROHRABACHER. Reclaiming my time for a moment, Madam Speaker, the first point the gentleman made, one would understand that. During the Cold War, when we were in a contest with the Soviet Union, we used the China card. We played the China card. And, yes, just like during World War II, when we allied ourselves with Joseph Stalin in order to defeat Adolf Hitler, which was the major threat to peace and freedom at that time, that was a moral thing to do. We were allying ourselves with one bad group in order to defeat a greater threat. It was okay to defeat Adolf Hitler by working with the communists, but after Adolf Hitler [[Page H3852]] was off the scene and defeated, it was no longer the right thing to do working with the communists. That is number one. When Ronald Reagan was President of the United States and continued to have this policy of working with China, because the Soviet Union was still our enemy, even then we were supporting a democracy movement in China. We were supporting those people who were struggling to build a free China. That is why there was a great surge of democracy at the end of the Reagan administration. And at Tiananmen Square, which, of course, happened right after Reagan left office, there was this great upsurge of democracy in China, and within a few months they were massacred. They were massacred at Tiananmen Square, which was just 10 years ago. But let me go to this point about the companies that my colleague from California is talking about. I am the chairman of the Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics of the Committee on Science, and it was the activities of several of these American aerospace companies that first led me several years ago to investigate this issue. I spent 6 months of my life investigating that American companies were upgrading communist Chinese rockets. Perhaps my friend from Arizona remembers me stopping on the floor and saying something terrible is going on here and I am looking into it. I went around telling people, ``I investigated this. I went to the contractors and subcontractors.'' And, finally, I got enough information to prove exactly what the Cox report has verified and there was an official investigation launched by the Cox report. But what is significant here is these companies are part of an engagement strategy. My colleagues have to remember we have set down the rules for these companies to go into China. The idea is that engagement will make China more liberal and will then pose less of a threat to the United States. But what are we reading? What is the gentleman telling us? What that report verifies is this policy has had the opposite impact. In a horrible way it has made us vulnerable like we never dreamed we would be vulnerable. Our children now are in jeopardy to be incinerated by these high-tech weapon systems we spent billions of dollars to develop. We could not have imagined that in our worst nightmare. It has been a wrong policy. We have to go back and reexamine it. We have to change that policy. And what has it done? It has made us less safe over here. It has not been good for us economically. Our companies are setting up factories over there to put our own people out of work. It is corrupting our own political process. {time} 2330 Those same companies and other companies are lobbying us. They are not over in China lobbying for democracy. They are lobbying us. They are giving us contributions in order to protect their slave trade and their blood money. I yield to my friend from Arizona. Mr. HAYWORTH. I thank my colleagues from California. I thank our new Member of the Congress for his perceptive abilities to go right to the bipartisan report and get to the heart of the matter. And as my more senior colleague from California points out, as I sit and hear my two friends reflect on this obscenity committed against our constitutional republic, I cannot help as a student of history step back and realize how prophetic were the words of our 34th President, Dwight David Eisenhower, in his farewell address when he told us to be mindful of the military-industrial complex, of those whose allegiance to our Nation could be subverted. And we have seen it in the case of Hughes and Loral, in the case of Loral, Bernard Schwartz, the top contributor to the Democratic National Committee, and it is tragic that this transpired. But facts are stubborn things. And to look beyond that, to the words of the bipartisan report, that these companies willfully circumvented American law and, Madam Speaker, this points out an affliction, a cancer that is infecting the body politic, when we have those who have sworn to uphold and execute our laws who refuse to enforce the law and apparently have broken those laws. My colleague from California, in the candor for which he is renowned, pointed a portion of the culpability at the Congress. But the inescapable fact remains that at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, there are those who willfully, willingly sought the contributions of a foreign power, of those who are not citizens of the United States, of those who are not eligible to participate in our political system to gain political victory. At this point, Madam Speaker, we must ask, what price political victory? The betrayal of our most sensitive technologies to put in harm's way the very children the President of the United States spoke of at this podium in his State of the Union address 2 years ago when he came here and bragged to the Congress of the United States that no American child lived or went to sleep that night under the threat of Russian missiles? What price victory, Madam Speaker? What price victory? When those who swear to uphold and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and provide for the common defense would allow such a perversion of priorities today to the point where we have not only the Communist Chinese but the outlaw nation that is North Korea and the extremist states of Iraq and Iran and the others who now possess nuclear technology and have within their grasp the ability to harm virtually every American family. These are questions that cause great unease. There is no partisan glee to this. But the strength of our constitutional republic throughout our history has been that we heed the call and understand the threats and understand the dangers. And we stand again, Madam Speaker, at that very juncture. How tragic the circumstance. But how compelling the call to action for this Congress and for the American people. Mr. ROHRABACHER. Reclaiming my time for a moment, let me just state that the fight on this issue will be over normal trade relations. If we again renew normal trade relations with Communist China, this body is going to send the signal to not only Communist China but to the world that we are backing away, that we do not have the will to protect our interests, we do not have the will to be the world's leader, we do not have the will to even protect our own national interests and our own national security. All those who are listening, all those people, American people who are out in the hinterland wondering what can I do, what can we do, there are policies that we have to make. The Cox report outlined things that we have to do. First and foremost, we have to quit treating Communist China as if it is a friend, as if it is like Great Britain or a democratic society. First and foremost, we have to quit calling it our strategic partner, quit acting like it is our friend and we have to recognize that it is a hostile power. As a hostile power, we do not have their scientists combing through our laboratories, we do not have exchange programs with their military which I found out they were having exchange programs with our military. We were inviting them here, have been having them here to see how our military conducts its business and to train their own military in logistics and how to run military operations. We have got to quit treating them that way. We have to build a missile defense system. We have got to do it. We have now given them the ability to incinerate our people. Our only hope is to make sure that we rush ahead with technology development to protect them now that that genie is out of the bottle. We have got to make sure that the United States of America ends the trading relationship that gives the Communist Chinese $60 billion in hard currency. The Communist Chinese, these people who run Beijing, they understand what is going on. At the end of the year, they have $60 billion in hard currency to do with what they want, to modernize their weapons, to make alliances with dictators and gangsters and drug lords all over the world, $60 billion in hard currency to destroy us. We have got to end the rules of the game that gives them that $60 billion. By the way, it is not a free trade situation. The Chinese have high tariffs against any American products that we want to sell there. And we have permitted them to have those high tariffs while their goods flood into the United States at low tariffs. Is this good for American [[Page H3853]] working people? No. In fact, what is happening when you hear about we have about $14 billion where they say, ``They bought $14 billion worth of goods from us.'' But if you look at what those goods are, those are mainly technologies and manufacturing units, so that we are building up their capabilities, their military capabilities and their manufacturing capabilities with that $14 billion, while they flood into our market with about $80 billion worth of goods and services which they sell to us with almost no tariff. So, in other words, when they talk about, ``We can't isolate China, we have to trade with them,'' they are not selling our products over there, they are building factories over there and they are doing it by closing factories here. And here is the real stinger, which I mentioned earlier. Most-favored-nation status or normal trade relations, as they say, what does that really mean in terms of government policy? The real impact of it is, because even if we do not pass it, people can still sell things, we are not saying you cannot sell things to China, all it means is if someone is going to set up a factory in China, he has to do so at his own risk. When he takes his money over there, he does not get a subsidized loan from the Export-Import Bank, or the IMF or the Asian Pacific Bank or any of these other multitude of financial institutions that receive U.S. taxpayer funds. All we are talking about is cutting off these big businessmen from having their investments guaranteed by the taxpayers and these very same taxpayers are having their jobs taken away because they are setting up factories in China to export back to the United States. Now, who has it been good for? Who has this economic policy been good for? It has not been good for our security, we have already shown that. My colleague from California demonstrated that these companies ended up doing, what, doing something that strategically national security-wise is a nightmare, so it is not good for our national security. It is not good for us economically. They say, ``Oh, look at our big economic boom.'' Well, our good, big economic boom, yes, why do these Americans have to be investing overseas in Communist China for us to have a boom? They could invest in a democratic country like the Philippines, for example, they need investment there. No, they are investing in Communist China because they can cut one deal with a gangster and they think they are going to get a quick profit. So who has it been good for? It has not been good for our country, for our economy, for the working people. It has been good for a few billionaires. I call them Bill's billionaire buddies. That is who this China policy has been good for. We have got to have the courage to sever ourselves from the policies of the past and fundamentally reexamine those policies and strategies, not for isolation, not for isolation. We want engagement, yes, just the way we would engage Adolf Hitler or Tojo or someone like that. We engaged them in a way that showed them courage and determination and engaged them only in a way that would benefit the people of the United States and the security of the United States, not in a way that would make them think that we were whimpering cowards. {time} 2340 At the end of the day, when the President of the United States goes to Beijing and says, or Madeleine Albright goes to Beijing and mouths some cliche about human rights or talks about, oh, you have got to have a better trade barrier, lower those trade barriers, you got to do this, you got to quit persecuting Christians, you got to quit doing these things that get our Congressmen mad at you; the Chinese dictators, these gangsters, take that as a sign that we do not believe in a darned thing. They take that as a sign that even our President and even our leaders care more about these billionaires than they do about the American people and the national security. The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mrs. Biggert). The time of the gentleman from California (Mr. Rohrabacher) has expired. Mr. HAYWORTH. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that I be given the time until the top of the hour when we have to, by the rules of the House, adjourn. The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 6, 1999, the Chair recognizes the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Hayworth) for the remainder of the time until the top of the hour. Mr. HAYWORTH. I thank my good friend, the gentlewoman from Illinois in the Chair, and I thank her for the adroit manner in which she is administering the rules of the House this evening, and I thank her for the indulgence to continue this conversation with my two colleagues from California until the top of the hour, which will be 9 p.m. in the Western States from whence we hail. But, Madam Speaker, it is worth noting that our words and observations tonight carry to the American people not a paranoia, not a panic, but a clear, strong resolve that at long last those of us who are given the constitutional authority to provide for the common defense understand the clear and present danger that confronts our constitutional Republic. We take no glee in it, we wish it were not so. But as former President Reagan said, facts are stubborn things, and as my junior colleague from California points out and the bipartisan words of the Cox committee report, there are disturbing conclusions drawn that force us to reassess our national security, that force us to reassess our trade policy, that force us to reassess the affairs of state that ofttimes come under the heading of foreign policy. The challenges are real. No amount of spin, no amount of economic prosperity, no amount of lip-biting and empathy can obscure them from any quarter. And again we offer this because, as I was taught again during our district work period when I had the chance to stand alongside veterans in Flagstaff, Arizona, when more than 200 residents of that city came together to commemorate the sacrifices of our war dead, I was reminded that the words of our Constitution are more than verbiage strewn on parchment. They are a living, breathing part of us as a people, and we dare not, we dare not ignore our duties and our responsibilities. And citizen after citizen came to me expressing their real concerns. Oh, we do not hear about them from the 24-hour news networks, we do not hear about them except in scant effort by the three major news network anchors, but the American people understand that Abraham Lincoln, whom history predestined would preside over the most divisive bloody conflict in our history, understood full well that the American people, once fully informed, would make the correct decision; and our role is to fully inform and to answer this threat and this cause. And I am so pleased that our colleague from California joins us in his first term that he brings this report; and I would note, Madam Speaker, that those who may hear these words can gain access to the Cox committee report via my office Web site, and I think my colleague from California has more he would like to share from that report and other observations. I would yield to him at this time. Mr. OSE. Madam Speaker, it is ironic that we find ourselves here talking about rocket scientists, because under no circumstances do I pretend to be a rocket scientist. However I think, like so many things we are involved in, whether it be running our families with our spouses or raising our children or running our businesses, the devil of doing anything is in the details that are involved. And I want to run through a few things that are in the Cox report in particular related to what used to be the United States' quantitative and qualitative edge in technology and what damage has occurred as a result of the loss of these secrets. As many people know, the United States has continually improved its ability to deliver intercontinental ballistic missiles, whether it be telemetry or design or payloads or what have you; year after year after year, compared to the situations in other countries where the technology available, for instance to the People's Republic of China or others, was either based on 1950s design or was wholly unavailable, period. And the reason these things are so important and particularly related to the most current news we hear about the loss of secrets from Los Alamos and other laboratories is that the design warheads and the manner in [[Page H3854]] which they are delivered are significantly improved, both in terms of payload and efficiency, by virtue of having one country steal from us that technology that we have created by virtue of investment over tens of years and billions of dollars. For instance, what used to be our technology in the 1950s could deliver arguably a relatively small payload accurately. Over the years we have been able to create technology and implement technology that allows us to shrink the size of our warheads, improve the delivery system on a ballistic missile basis and put multiple warheads in a single delivery system as opposed to one warhead per delivery. The tragedy of the theft of these secrets is that our ostensible trading partners now possess the same ability, as compared to as few as 10 years ago, in the late 1980s, when they were totally incapable, incapable of delivering that kind of a weapon on the United States. And the reason that is important is that, as we go forward, as the House wishes and has adopted with its national ballistic missile defense plan, as we go forward, putting that in place, if we have a missile come to our shores with multiple, independent reentry vehicles, the difficulty of preventing those weapons from detonating are multiplied logarithmically. It is not arithmetic, it is not geometric, it is logarithmic because our ostensible trading partners, instead of having again one warhead per missile have shrunk the size of their warheads and loaded multiple warheads onto the missile, and as they come back into the atmosphere, will release them on target. This is something that affects every single one of us. It has nothing to do with economic trade in my opinion. This is a national security issue, and it is of great concern to me on this issue, as it has been, as you both know and as many of the others know here as to our intervention in Yugoslavia, that we, number one, are ignoring the national security interests in the case of these ballistic missiles and the information that has been stolen relative to technology and the like in one case, and we are unable to identify a national security interest in another case, that being Yugoslavia. {time} 2350 So the gentleman from Arizona's comment is well made about how to get access to this. I am sure that the gentleman from California (Mr. Cox) has it on his web site. I would encourage every American to at least read the forward summary in volume 1. It is frightening information. It is emblematic of the difficulty that we face and the dangers we face in the real world today. Mr. HAYWORTH. In fact, I thank my colleague for his comments. Madam Speaker, I would invite every member of this House, with the technological capabilities we all enjoy, to post this unanimous bipartisan report on their individual web sites so that, Madam Speaker, those in this country who are citizens, who are concerned, can have access to this information, full and unfettered, so that they understand the extent to which our national security has been jeopardized. I yield to my more senior colleague from California. Mr. ROHRABACHER. I think we have certainly outlined tonight the magnitude of the problem, and my colleague from California has demonstrated that what we are talking about is the survival or the incineration of millions of Americans. I mean, again, it is worse than our worst nightmare could possibly have been 10 and 20 years ago. No one could ever have imagined that this would come about. But I worked for a guy in the White House who always said that what is important is not just to focus on the problem, but to make sure you always offer a solution, and then look towards the opportunities that you have. So I would just like for a couple of minutes talk about the options that we have and just say, what are they? Number one, first and foremost, we have to start off with a missile defense system. We have to move forward with missile defense. As my colleague from California just mentioned, it is going to be a lot harder now, because they not only have a missile with one warhead, and a missile that was pretty unreliable, but, thanks to some American companies using technology that we paid for, we paid for it, taxpayers developed that technology to protect us during the Cold War, now it has been given away and stolen and actually sold by our major corporate leaders, some of these major corporate leaders. So we have to go forward with missile defense, do it seriously, and do it as if the lives of our children depend upon it. Number two, we have to work closely and reestablish close ties and a trusting relationship with the democracies of the Pacific and Asia and the Philippines, Japan, Korea and Thailand, which no longer trust in the word of the United States, which see us kowtowing before this communist dictatorship in Beijing. The democratic peoples of the world have to know they can count on the United States, and especially in that area in Asia and the Pacific region. Again, we must go back to Communist China and we must alter our fundamental relationship, quit treating them as a friend and begin treating them as a hostile power, which means no more military exchanges, no more scientific exchanges, and especially no more subsidies for our businessmen going over there to invest and building up their economy and their capabilities technologically to build these weapons you are talking about. It is one thing to have the blueprints. It is another thing to have the machine tools and the computer technology in order to accomplish that. We can start, first of all, doing this by eliminating their ability to have an unfair trade relationship with us, by supporting my resolution of disapproval of normal trade relations in the next couple of weeks, which is going to come before the body. The American people, all of the veterans you saw and that I saw and you saw in your Memorial Day services, veterans from around the United States, should be here pounding on doors, demanding, demanding that we eliminate most-favored-nation status, that normal trade status with China be denied. This should be a goal of the American Legion and the Veterans of Foreign Wars. Patriotic organizations around the United States in the next two weeks should mobilize behind this and knock on every Congressman's door, and they will listen if the American people speak. Money talks maybe in these campaign contributions, but in a democracy the voice of the people talk louder, and we can be glad we live in a country where the people's will will be heard. We must invest in democracies and invest in democracy. What that means is this: How did Ronald Reagan win the Cold War without having to fight with the Soviet Union? We faced the same type of incineration, by the way, you are talking about, with the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union had MIRVed warheads too, did they not? The[C were a horrible threat to our well-being. For decades we lived under that threat. Ronald Reagan ended it in a number of ways. He rebuilt our military strength, which is something we need to do, not only missile defense. But what he did, most importantly, was support those people who believe in democracy around the world, whether it was in Nicaragua, where eventually the Nicaraguan freedom fighters, who people on the other side of the aisle did everything they could to prevent us from helping those people they called the Contras, and eventually there was a free election in Nicaragua, and those communists, the Sandinistas, were booted out, even though our colleagues on the other side of the aisle said they represent the real will of the Nicaraguan people. If we support democracy around the world, and that means especially in China, we should be financing and working just like we did with Lech Walesa in Poland and freedom movements, what Ronald Reagan did all over the world. We should focus on China as if our very national survival depended on us reaching out to the decent freedom-loving people of China. If any message goes out tonight, it should be Communist China, Communist China, may be our enemy. That regime of gangsters may be our enemy. But our greatest ally, our greatest ally, is the people of China. The Chinese people are our friends. They are wonderful people. They long for the [[Page H3855]] same type of human dignity and freedom and liberty and justice and opportunity for their families that we long for for our families. They do not hate the United States. They are not our enemies. We have to do everything to work for the freedom-loving people and build up that democracy movement that was wiped out by the Communist Chinese once Ronald Reagan left office. Let us work with them and build Radio Free Asia. Let us support the freedom movement. It is what is true to our principles. Do not let anybody say we are anti-Asian, anti-Chinese. We are not. We are pro- freedom, and we believe that freedom is the right of every person of every color of every religion and every ethnic background. That is our strength. Mr. HAYWORTH. Madam Speaker, one can almost anticipate the reflexes action of those who man the spin cycles elsewhere in the sectors of this capital city, those cacophony of critics that we are certain to hear. A couple of notes should be acknowledged as we conclude this time on the House floor. I thank both of my colleagues. Number one, it is not enough to say everybody does this, for, if that were the case, we would blame Lyndon Johnson for the John Walker Navy espionage spy ring that began operation in the late 1960s. No, the analogy may be somewhat quaint, but I think it is appropriate. It is one thing to lock your windows and doors and set an alarm and go on vacation and have folks cut that alarm off, somehow circumvent that system, come into what you thought was your secured home and steal your secrets. It is quite another thing for your neighbor next door to meet the truck of the would-be burglars, to let them in the House, to help them find your most valuable possessions, and then to disavow any knowledge of that action. And that is just how simple and just how sad the current dilemma we face in fact presents itself. A couple of final notes. It is sad that this administration has worked at cross-purposes. It has, on the one hand, deployed American forces to more locations than any other administration in the post World War II era, and, at the same time, it has denied the efforts of this common-sense conservative Congress to provide for our national defense, to provide the weapons systems, to provide the manpower and material. So you have a situation where there is work at cross purposes. Worse still, the actions of this Congress to provide a missile defense system at long last after the news of the Chinese theft, those on the left joined us in bipartisan fashion, and yet this President in subsequent correspondence has, pointed out by our majority leader, sought to reassure the Chinese that we would not mount a missile defense system. Madam Speaker, the American people deserve better. It should be the mission of this Congress to make sure we provide for the common defense. ____________________