My Say: China Bad ?What Phyllis Schlafly Knew in June 1998
https://eagleforum.org/psr/1998/june98/psrjune98.html
Congress Must Stop Kowtowing to China
The vote on Most Favored Nation (MFN) status for Communist China is coming up again. Taking a principled position against MFN would give Republicans the high ground on morals, national security, and economics. It would put them on the side of human rights, freedom, fair trade, and jobs for Americans, while at the same time exposing Clinton’s policy of abandoning human rights, exporting U.S. jobs, and endangering national security in order to get cash for his reelection.
We were promised that trade relations would encourage the Chinese Communists to become civilized members of the family of nations and open up a billion-person market. We gave them 17 years of MFN to prove it, and they flunked the test.
The Chinese cracked down brutally on all the brave Tiananmen Square youngsters in 1989. If we care about human rights, we must not forget those who marched with the papier-maché Statue of Liberty.
China leads the world in the persecution of people of all religious faiths, especially Christians. China bans all religious activity and expression unless directed by Communist Party officials. Priests have been arrested for saying Mass. Evangelical “house churches” have been disrupted and closed. Christians have been interned for “re-education.” The police intimidate the people with anti-religious slogans painted in public places. China’s policy of forced abortions, sterilizations, and infanticide is a festering scandal.
The Chinese are professional thieves. Chinese plants openly steal, then manufacture and sell, our computer software, video films, musical recordings, compact disks, books, and other intellectual property. These illegal products are sold all over the world, resulting in a loss to Americans of $2 billion a year.
In 1996, the Chinese were caught red-handed smuggling 2,000 AK-47 automatic assault rifles to Los Angeles street gangs. Our BATF uncovered a sophisticated operation, which must have enjoyed the complicity of the Chinese government, to sell weapons at a 400% mark-up to U.S. big-city gangs that want to wipe out their rivals. Those arrested had direct links to China’s Defense Ministry, Deng Xiaoping’s son-in-law, and arms dealer Wang Jun (the same one who attended a Clinton White House coffee).
Chinese “businessmen” are into weapons trafficking in a big way. China sells missiles, nuclear components, and chemical and germ warfare equipment to our enemies such as Libya, Iran and Iraq.
Why do the advocates of “free trade” and “global economy” continue to insult our intelligence with the fiction that friendly commercial relations will cause China to respect democracy and human rights? The evidence is overwhelming that China looks on the United States, not just as an economic competitor, but as the enemy.
U.S. trade with China is a one-way street: China sells to us but won’t buy from us, resulting in our annual trade deficit with China of $40 billion. People who won’t buy aren’t much of a “market.” China has a 35% tariff on U.S. goods going to China, while we have only a ridiculously low 2% tariff on Chinese products imported to America. Congress should impose a tariff on imported Chinese goods equal to the tariff they impose on our goods going into China. It’s more important to reduce U.S. income taxes than to favor the people who want to buy imports from China made with slave labor.
Congress should reject Most Favored Nation (MFN) status for China and notify the World Trade Organization that, if it admits China, we pull out — not only for national security reasons, not only because of its persecution of Christians, not only because of its massive theft of our intellectual property, not only because of its outrageous arms trafficking with our enemies, but also because of China’s scandalous attempt to influence the 1996 American elections.
Congress should move rapidly with Congressional investigations of Asian attempts to influence U.S. policy through cash contributions to Bill Clinton and the Democratic National Committee.
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