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[Page: H2327]

The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of May 12, 1995, the gentleman from California [Mr. Cox] is recognized during morning business for 5 minutes.

Mr. COX of California. Mr. Speaker, I would like to respond to the preceding speaker's remarks concerning the events now taking place in the Taiwan Strait. It is very, very important that this Congress is treating this issue today on the floor. It is very, very important that the United States of America make clear to the People's Republic of China that a war of aggression waged against the democracy on Taiwan will not be accepted, not by the United States, not by the free world, and that is the world that Taiwan is joining, because right now, in the days ahead, Taiwan is preparing for the first ever free, fair, open, and democratic elections of a head of government in nearly 5,000 years of Chinese history.

This is an extraordinary achievement which all of us applaud, and we should. Communism, which continues to reign in the People's Republic of China, is the antithesis of democracy. Wei Jingsheng, who was recently sentenced again to prison for his role as a democracy activist in the People's Republic, is recent testimony to how stark that difference is.

The People's Republic of China is free to maintain its Communist dictatorship. It is free to abuse human rights. It is free to in every respect, economic and political, differ from the free people on Taiwan and do all of this without military threat from the United States or anyone. In fact, we openly trade with the People's Republic of China.

But what they are not free to do, what they have no right to do, in nature or in law, is to mount an unprovoked military assault against the island democracy on Taiwan.

Right now, the People's Republic of China is threatening freedom in the world because they are threatening this military invasion. The United States policy has been and shall remain that we will trust any outcome peaceably achieved through diplomatic negotiations and ongoing discussions and all other peaceful meetings between the Government on Taiwan and the Government in Beijing, the Communist Government of the People's Republic of China.

Unilateral imposition of a solution, least of all by military force, is not acceptable. in the Shanghai Communique, which the preceding speaker referred to, in 1982, the People's Republic of China agreed that they would seek a peaceful resolution of any disagreements they have with Taiwan. That is what everyone in the world should support.

Naked military aggression targeted against a democracy is something that everyone here should understand threatens each of us. What we want in that region is peace. What we do not want is inadvertent war.

Right now the Communist leaders in Beijing are pushing and pushing and pushing as hard as they can, competing in fact with one another, to see which of them is going to succeed to the head of that dictatorship, and they are trying to show who is the most muscular, who is the most Communist, who is the most opposed to democracy.

As they push and push and push, they must understand that there is a line beyond which they must not go, and that is launching a military assault against Taiwan. If the United States is ambiguous on this point, we risk war through weakness. We will not have war. We will have peace if we are quite clear in

this aspect of our foreign policy. But there is nothing to be gained and everything to be lost from saying we are not sure what would happen if the People's Republic of China were to launch a military invasion of Taiwan, because the truth is we do know the answer to that, and we ought to tell Beijing first before it happens. The People's Republic of China is our sixth-largest trading partner. Taiwan is America's seventh-largest trading partner. Because the PRC runs a huge trade deficit with America, it is true that Taiwan actually buys more from the United States than does the Communist government in China. Because they are respectively our sixth- and seventh-largest trading partners, we have nothing to gain from a war in the Taiwan Strait.

We in America must be the peacemakers, and there is only one way for the world's only superpower to maintain peace here, and that is to be clear. We have no diplomacy that can help us once there is a war that is started on a mistaken premise that the United States will not respond. But we do have a means--because of our relationship with both Taiwan and the People's Republic of China--have a means to keep the peace, and that is to let them know that America stands by its friendship with the peaceful government on Taiwan. Taiwan is not a threat to the PRC. The PRC, the People's Republic of China, must not be a threat to the free government on Taiwan.

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