Shattering Illusions: Jacoby, North Weigh-in Against PNTR

(Washington, D.C.): As the House of Representatives prepares to vote on granting
Permanent
Normal Trade Relations to China two trenchant pieces deserve the attention of legislators and
their constituents. The first by Jeff Jacoby of the Boston Globe addresses the
ongoing brutality
of the Communist regime even as they hope to secure Congresses approval of PNTR. It stands
to
reason that once PNTR is granted this sort of repressive behavior will only intensify, as it has
since President Clinton ended the formal linkage between MFN and human rights in 1994. It is
a relevant observation from a national security prospective that a nation that treats its own
citizens in such a barbaric manner will not treat the citizens of other countries any better.

The second piece by Oliver North in Sunday’s Washington Times
underscores the low
probability that China’s will be the first totalitarian government to relinquish its power
voluntarily in favor of a pluralistic democracy simply because it is enriched by our financial,
economic, trade and other forms of support and legitimization.

The Boston Globe, 22 May 2000

Normal Trade? Yes, When China is Normal

By Jeff Jacoby

It will be time to upgrade China’s trade status with the United States when the Chinese
government stops torturing middle-aged widows to death.

No member of Congress should vote on the bill to establish permanent normal trade relations
with China without first reading Ian Johnson’s harrowing April 20 account in The Wall Street
Journal of what Beijing did to Chen Zixiu, a retired auto worker from Weifang.

“The day before Chen Zixiu died,” the story by reporter Ian Johnson begins, “her captors
again
demanded that she renounce her faith in Falun Dafa. Barely conscious after repeated jolts from a
cattle prod, the 58-year-old stubbornly shook her head.

“Enraged, the local officials ordered Ms. Chen to run barefoot in the snow. Two days of
torture
had left her legs bruised and her short black hair matted with pus and blood, said cellmates and
other prisoners who witnessed the incident. She crawled outside, vomited, and collapsed. She
never regained consciousness.”

Falun Dafa is not a crime ring or a conspiracy to overthrow the Chinese Communist Party. It
is a
system of breathing exercises (called Falun Gong), combined with spiritual readings and
meditation. Chen was attracted to it because she found, like several million other Chinese, that
doing the exercises made her feel better. But the Beijing dictatorship, intolerant of any movement
it doesn’t control, banned Falun Gong last summer. Chen was arrested. And when this humble
woman — who, Johnson writes, was “barely literate and never before interested in politics” —
refused to abandon her innocent exercises, the government decided to teach her a lesson.

“Ms. Chen’s ordeal began that night,” the Journal reports. In a nearby cell, other prisoners
heard
her screams. “Officials from the Chengguan Street Committee used plastic truncheons on her
calves, feet, and lower back, as well as a cattle prod on her head and neck, according to
witnesses.”

By the end, not much was left of Ms. Chen. Her son and daughter were grudgingly permitted
to
see her corpse. “Their mother, they recalled, was laid out on a table….Her calves were black.
Six-inch welts streaked along her back. Her teeth were broken. Her ear was swollen and blue.”

Advocates of normalizing trade relations with China — permanently granting it what used to
be
called most-favored-nation status — say the decision should not be tied to human rights. The
current system of annually debating China’s trade status, they point out, hasn’t induced Beijing
to stop abusing the Chinese people. But expanding trade will help spread private enterprise and
individual ownership of property in China, paving the way for wider freedom and democracy. So
the normalizers reason.

And yet — if China’s rulers are prepared to behave with such grotesque brutality now, when
the
trade changes it wants so badly are at the top of Washington’s agenda, how are they going to
behave when the bill is approved and normalization is a done deal?

In strictly financial terms, there is no doubt that more trade with China would mean gains for
American industry. That has always been the argument for conducting business as usual with
totalitarians. Free trade is a marvelous engine of prosperity; its economic benefits cannot be
disputed. But profits are not the sum and substance of America’s interests in the world.

Permanent normal relations with China? Yes, when China is a normal country. Normal
countries
do not break harmless citizens who gather for exercise and meditation. Normal countries do not
operate a vast network of slave labor camps in which millions of men and women are beaten and
starved into producing goods for export. Normal countries do not persecute Christians and
Muslims for worshipping in private, or imprison Catholic bishops for their loyalty to Rome, or
torture Tibetan monks for revering the Dalai Lama.

Normal countries do not forbid families from having more than one child, or force abortions
on
women who get pregnant without permission.

Nor do normal countries recklessly threaten war. Earlier this year, China deployed more than
100
ew ballistic missiles opposite Taiwan. Beijing warned that it may resort to “all drastic measures…
including the use of force” to compel Taiwan’s reunification with China. It threatened to respond
with a nuclear attack if the United States came to the island’s defense.” The United States,” a
Chinese military newspaper predicted, “will not sacrifice 200 million Americans for 20 million
Taiwanese.”

To repeat: If this is how China’s communist dictators act now, when they are eager to see the
trade bill pass, what are they going to be like once the bill becomes law and Washington’s
leverage is gone?

Denying China permanent normal trade relations does not mean denying it trade. It means
that
trade continues under current arrangements: business goes on as before, and Congress decides
each year whether to extend China’s privileges for another 12 months.

When will the time be ripe for normal dealings with China? When the Chinese Communist
Party
tells the truth about Chen Zixiu. The poor woman died, the government insists, of natural causes.

Jeff Jacoby is a columnist for The Boston Globe.

Washington Times, 21 May 2000

Trading in Sellouts

By Oliver North

When the gravel-throated old liberal, Charlie Rangel, the “friend of the American working
man,”
the Korean War veteran, the man who had championed labor and human rights from Central
America to South Africa, and the man who would be chairman of the powerful House Ways and
Means Committee sold out, I knew it was just about over. And it is.

Last Wednesday evening, Rep. Rangel, New York Democrat, appeared as my guest on
MSNBC’s Equal Time – just moments after he cast his vote in the Ways and Means Committee
to grant Permanent Normal Trade Relations (PNTR) to Communist China.

Thanks in large part to Mr. Rangel’s defection from the cause of human rights, the measure
passed in the committee 34-4 with no acrimony and little debate. William the Impeached, who
had lobbied the influential New Yorker hard, said Mr. Rangel’s support was “an enormously
important decision.”

In response to my “How could you?” question, Mr. Rangel, who had once vociferously
supported economic sanctions and a global trade embargo against South Africa’s apartheid
regime, replied: “It makes sense for the United States to have normal trade relations with all
countries.” It might, if all countries were free. Free trade for free people does make sense.
Unfortunately, Communist China isn’t free – a point that has apparently been missed by Mr.
Rangel, and most Republicans.

That’s not the only point being missed. When I challenged Mr. Rangel to “name one country
where we convinced a repressive and threatening regime to mend their ways and offer their
people real freedom because we decided to trade with them,” he couldn’t. Instead, the once
reputable defender of “free labor” and the union movement launched into a tirade against the
U.S. trade embargo on Cuba.

In fact, there are no credible examples of where we have “traded” despotism into democracy.
The
Clinton administration’s most recent effort to do so, the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, has been
a miserable failure for all concerned. Six years after we established full diplomatic relations and
lifted trade restrictions with the communist regime in Hanoi, the Vietnamese economy is in a
shambles, American firms trying to do business there have lost tens of millions of dollars, and
the people of Vietnam are no more free today than they were in 1994.

And that’s the pattern that’s playing out in the People’s Republic of China. On May 3, Rep.
Frank Wolf of Virginia, one of a small handful of Republicans with the courage to stand up to
the juggernaut for permanent normal trade relations (PNTR) with China, testified before the
House Ways and Means Committee. Mr. Wolf chronicled horrific abuses of Protestant church
leaders, Catholic bishops, priests, nuns, Buddhist monks and lay people of every faith by the
regime in Beijing: “Right smack in the middle of this debate on PNTR, the Chinese government
continues to arrest and imprison people because of their faith.”

Despite more than $82 billion U.S. dollars that flowed into the PRC in the last 12 months for
the
purchase of Chinese goods, Mr. Wolf concludes there has been a “sharp deterioration in freedom
of religion in China during the past year.” Like the O.J. jury, Mr. Rangel and his colleagues
turned a deaf ear to the evidence.

But granting PNTR to Communist China requires more than just ignoring the victims of a
brutal
repressive regime. It also means that those who vote for it must sell out America’s security and
the safety of those we are pledged to defend. Mr. Clinton’s pals in Beijing have used the billions
they have made from trading with the United States to increase their military budget by more
than 12 percent this year alone. They have threatened “blood-soaked battle” with Taiwan and are
in the process of deploying hundreds of short-range ballistic and anti-shipping missiles along the
Taiwan Straits.

And there’s more. Members of Congress who vote for PNTR with China will not only have
to
ignore the threats, religious oppression, and human rights abuses from Beijing, they will also be
voting to surrender their obligation “To regulate commerce with foreign nations,” as the Framers
so quaintly put it in our Constitution. And who would assume this responsibility? An un-elected,
unaccountable group of “globocrats” in the vaunted World Trade Organization would take on
this burden. Now there’s a deal.

This Wednesday, the House of Representatives will vote whether to grant the People’s
Republic
of China the same trading privileges that we offer Great Britain. Between now and then, every
one of those, in both parties, who say they are opposed to the measure (about 140) and those who
claim to be undecided (about 149) will be under intense pressure to sell out and vote “yes.”
Those who want to be able to look themselves in the mirror in the morning when they shave, put
on their make-up (or both), should screw up their courage and “Just Say No.”

Oliver North is a nationally syndicated columnist.