WASHINGTON - Gary Bauer, former Republican presidential candidate and Campaign for Working Families founder, today, in a letter to Republican Members of Congress, outlined U.S. national security threats and human rights violations by China as reasons to reconsider approving permanent normal trade relations for China later this month.
The following are excerpts from the Bauer letter. The full text of the letter is attached.
"I ask you to consider what normalizing our trade relations with China will mean not only for our future national security, but also for the cause of human rights inside China itself. By making MFN permanent, you are being asked to throw away the little leverage we currently have over China's communist oligarchs."
"Beijing daily oppresses its citizens, threatens democratic Taiwan and pursues an arms buildup not seen in Asia since the emergence of the Japanese Empire in the years immediately preceding World War II."
"China is among the world's worst abusers of human rights. Our own State Department reported recently that the human rights situation in China "deteriorated markedly" over the last year…."
"…China is clearly intent on supplanting the United States as the premier power in the region. China continues, moreover, to be the world's worst offender in the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, supplying arms and technology to such rogue states as North Korea, Libya and Iran."
"Letter to GOP Members on PNTR for China"
May 11, 2000
Dear Fellow Republican:
Two weeks from now you will cast one of your most important votes ever as a member of Congress. You will be asked to change permanently China's relationship with the United States. Before you cast this historic vote, I respectfully ask that you to pause and consider the full import of your action.
I am aware of how some of you have struggled with and agonized over this decision. Arguments can be made for extending permanent normal trade relations to China. I understand the pressures you are under to cast your lot with those who promise that making China's most favored nation trade status a permanent feature of U.S. law will bring enormous economic benefits to your home states and districts.
Doubtless if PNTR were approved, some short-term economic benefits might be realized. But I am persuaded that in the long run, viewed from the more distant perspective of history, we as a free people will come to regret such shortsightedness. I do not propose that we turn our back on China. I am neither an isolationist nor a protectionist. But our relations with China must be guided by some larger moral purpose beyond profits.
I ask you to consider what normalizing our trade relations with China will mean not only for our future national security, but also for the cause of human rights inside China itself. By making MFN permanent, you are being asked to throw away the little leverage we currently have over China's communist oligarchs.
Beijing daily oppresses its citizens, threatens democratic Taiwan and pursues an arms buildup not seen in Asia since the emergence of the Japanese Empire in the years immediately preceding World War II.
China is among the world's worst abusers of human rights. Our own State Department reported recently that the human rights situation in China "deteriorated markedly" over the last year. Thousands of followers of a peaceful Buddhist meditation sect have been jailed or sent to slave labor camps. Scores of Protestant and Catholic ministers, priests and bishops have been imprisoned. Just last week a woman was sentenced to eight years in prison for the "crime" of mailing newspaper clippings abroad. Another woman was arrested for telling an American newspaper about the beating death of her mother at the hands of the state secret police. Such abuses are common in China.
Even as China continues to mount a sustained espionage operation in the U.S. aimed at stealing our nuclear weapons secrets Beijing is using its $70 billion annual trade surplus with America to fund an unprecedented arms buildup. The communists have embarked on a massive missile program and are rapidly acquiring the weaponry to put at risk our naval forces in the western Pacific. China is clearly intent on supplanting the United States as the premier power in the region. China continues, moreover, to be the world's worst offender in the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, supplying arms and technology to such rogue states as North Korea, Libya and Iran.
Ten years ago students, workers, housewives and farmers gathered in Tiananmen Square to petition for some of the rights that men and women desire around the world -- the right to vote, the right to decide when you will marry and how many children you will have, the right to work and freedom to worship. When the People's Liberation Army ordered them to disperse, many students responded by waving copies of our Declaration of Independence with its ringing words, "all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator . . ." For many those were the last words they spoke before they died.
What does history ask of us at this moment? Only that we use, not squander, the great opportunities God has bestowed on us; that we honor the freedom other Americans have won for us; and that we respect those universal human rights we declared to the world were bestowed by our Creator on all people. And that we have foreign and trade policies that take the words of our Declaration with as much seriousness as the Chinese citizens who have died for those ideas.
Sincerely,
Gary Bauer |
