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[Page: S907]
Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, China is making bellicose statements about Taiwan. This morning's Washington Post begins an editorial with these words:
If it came to that, the United States would have no choice but to help Taiwan--a flourishing free-market democracy--defend itself against attack by Communist China. No treaty or law compels this response, but decency and strategic interest demand it. An American Government that allowed the issue of Taiwan's future be settled by China's force would be in disgrace as well as in error.
Mr. President, the best way to avoid force or to avoid giving a dictator and a dictatorship the appetite that will not be satisfied with conquering one area is to make clear that that will be resisted by the community of nations. I am not talking about the use of American troops, but I think American air power clearly ought to be brought to bear if such an eventuality should take place.
If China is permitted to grab Taiwan, I think it will be only a matter of time before China takes Mongolia and other areas. I think the best way of maintaining stability in that area of the world is to be firm.
I heard my colleague, Senator Feinstein, refer to our policy toward China as one of zigzagging. I think that is a correct analysis of what we are doing. I think we ought to be firm; we ought to be positive. I want to have good relations with China, but China should not think for a moment that she can invade Taiwan without having serious problems.
I ask unanimous consent, Mr. President, to have printed in the Record the Washington Post editorial and also an A.M. Rosenthal op-ed piece in the New York Times, `Washington Confronts China.'
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows:
If it came to that, the United States would have no choice but to help Taiwan--a flourishing free-market democracy--defend itself against attack by Communist China. No treaty or law compels this response, but decency and strategic interest demand it. An American government that allowed the issue of Taiwan's future to be settled by China's force would be in disgraced as well as in error.
This is what the United States should be conveying, and China pondering, as Beijing steps up military pressure on Taiwan. Down that road lies a possible direct confrontation with Washington. Even starting out on that road carries heavy risks for China. Especially dangerous is any possibility that Beijing may be setting out under the dubious and smug impression that the United States will back off and leave China with no heavy costs to pay at all.
But, of course, to be faced with an actual decision on rescuing a threatened Taiwan would itself signify a calamitous American policy failure. There is overwhelming national need and also adequate time to keep today's friction from becoming tomorrow's explosion.
The ever more glaring contrast between Beijing's totalitarianism and Taipei's American-nursed democracy, and the end of the Cold War, have weakened the 20-year-old international formulas supporting China's peaceful reunification with its wayward province. A significant opposition in Taiwan now favors independence. The government, coming up on Taiwan's first democratic presidential election, has had to bend, in part by seeking official American visas for its leaders, thus provoking Beijing. The Clinton administration has been slow to grant the visas, not wishing to aggravate its other tensions with China. American legislators of different stripes have come to Taiwan's side, further provoking Beijing.
Broad, forward-looking `dialogue' with China has been out of style in Washington since George Bush imprudently sent secret emissaries to Beijing after the Tiananmen massacre. Fighting fires has been in. This is a fire. The United States needs to encourage calming gestures by Taiwan (suspend the visa provocations) and China (suspend the thuggish threats). At home, it needs to reach a policy consensus with Congress in order to better show China that it cannot squeeze Taipei and to convey to Taiwan that it should not set about deliberately and recklessly on a policy of trying to draw the United States into an escalating showdown with Beijing. Then the two sides can return to the irregular but peaceful relationship they were pursuing before.
Washington has chosen the issue on which it will at last acknowledge and confront Chinese Communist action detrimental to the United States.
There was a considerable list to choose from. China threatens daily missile attacks against Taiwan. Beijing sells missiles to Iran and other Mideast dictatorships. At home it increases arrests and jail sentences for dissidents. It allows Internet use to only a relative handful, and from now on only through government-controlled ports.
Each act involves the U.S. An attack on Taiwan would force U.S. involvement. Sales of missiles endanger Mideast peace and defy U.S. policy against proliferation of high-tech weapons.
Increasing repression and closing access to international information is a slap at the U.S. Washington had assured the world of the opposite--that freedoms would increase in China after the 1994 Clinton Administration decision not to use economic pressure to ease oppression.
Well, enough is enough. Washington now says it will show its staunch determination to resist Chinese provocation--about compact disks. If China does not stop counterfeiting these disks, the Administration will increase tariffs on Chinese goods by as much as $1 billion.
Any commercial piracy costs manufacturers and artists money and should be opposed. But to appreciate the CD episode fully it helps to have a taste for bitter comedy.
1. The Communists will not keep any new promise better than they keep existing ones--or others, like ending slave-labor exports to the U.S.
2. If they do camouflage piracy better, they will demand concessions--like even tighter zipping of the U.S. mouth on human rights.
3. The U.S. announcement accentuates the moral disaster of Clintonian policy on China. CD's yes, people no. Mr. Clinton broke his promise to use tariff pressure to persuade Beijing to treat its Chinese and Tibetan political victims less viciously--maybe a mite less torture. Beijing answers by increasing, not decreasing, political oppression. He acts surprised.
Democrats and Republican politicians talk about the danger of cynicism. But they expect Americans not to see the cynicism of putting CD's above the blood of dissidents in China's gulags.
Worse, they may be right. I do not hear American university students or professors mobilizing against Chinese Communist cruelties, or consumers organizing a boycott like the one that helped kill South African apartheid.
If war comes to Taiwan, it will not be because Beijing believes its lie that Taiwan is preparing to declare its deserved independence. It will be because 100 miles off China's shore, Chinese people have created a society that is both prosperous and democratic. That so terrifies the perpetually insecure Politburo that it risks war--not only against Taiwanese independence of government but Taiwanese independence of mind.
Beijing uses missile threats to intimidate Taiwanese into voting for a party that is running on a pro-China platform and against independent-minded opponents.
The Taiwan Relations Act, passed by Congress in 1979, says that U.S. recognition of Communist China rests on the expectation that Taiwan's future will be determined by peaceful means.
The law states that any effort to determine Taiwan's future by other than peaceful means--which includes threats of daily missile attacks--are of grave concern to the U.S. and should be `promptly' reported by the President to Congress.
The President has not done that, promptly or at all. Nor has Congress demanded it, despite some members' attempts. Mr. Gingrich and Mr. Dole, the agenda-setters, become accomplices in the President's decision to ignore U.S. law.
Restraint is needed, we are told by U.S. officials and some journalists--we do not want a war over Taiwan, do we? Of course not. That is what facing the possibility is all about.
As long as Congress and President ignore their legal obligation to deal with China's threat to Taiwan, decide what steps to take and let China know, Beijing will believe it can attack Taiwan or keep terrorizing it, with no risk.
That is not restraint of confrontation that could lead to war. It is the blundering encouragement of both. How terribly many times must we learn?
[Page: S908]
Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, I see the majority leader is on the floor, and I yield the floor to him.
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