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Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, shortly after I announced that I would be retiring from the Senate, President Clinton called and suggested that from time to time, I should give a report on some issue facing the Nation, and today I am again doing that--this time with a few observations about the relationship between China, Taiwan, and the United States.
My interest in this subject is more than a sudden thrust caused by recent developments. My parents were Lutheran missionaries in China and had returned to the United States 1 month when I was born. I tell Chinese-American audiences that I was `made in China.' I grew up in a home that had Chinese art, guests, and influence. That gives me no more expertise than others, but I mention it because my interest has been longstanding.
Before the Shanghai communique that recognized the People's Republic of China, I favored recognizing the mainland Chinese Government, as well as the Government on Taiwan. It would have been somewhat similar to our recognizing both West Germany and East Germany as two separate governments. Neither Germany was particularly happy with that, but it acknowledged reality, and it did not prevent the two governments from eventually merging into one Germany.
Following that course with China and Taiwan would have been a wiser policy, and it would have acknowledged what is a reality: There are two separate governments.
But that did not happen, and hindsight is an easy luxury.
The situation now is confusing and could turn dangerous. Our colleague Senator Dianne Feinstein has described United States policy toward China as one of zig-zagging, and that, unfortunately, is an apt description.
Let me outline where we are and why I believe a firm and consistent U.S. policy is desirable for all parties.
China has moved generally in a constructive direction since the emergence of Deng Ziaoping's leadership following the death of Mao. All of us who have been visitors there are impressed by the economic gains, and with those gains has come some greater openness--within tight constraints--even on political expression, particularly in the southern part of China near Hong Kong. But the violent suppression of those who demonstrated peacefully for human rights at Tiananmen Square shocked Americans and all democratic nations, as well as the thousands of Chinese students in the United States. I remember speaking to a large gathering of Chinese students at Grant Park in Chicago. All of us were stunned by the Chinese Government's action. I also joined those peacefully protesting outside the Chinese Embassy here in Washington. The benign face of the Government of China many had come to expect, suddenly turned malevolent.
After none-too-swiftly denouncing the Government violence at Tiananmen Square, President Bush sent two of our top officials to Beijing to meet with their leaders, and whatever the content of the talks, the pictures that came back to us on the wire services were of two highly placed Americans, toasting the Chinese leadership that had just squelched, in a bloody fashion, the yearning for freedom of many of their people.
In the meantime, the nearby island of Taiwan has moved more and more toward the human rights we profess to support. Taiwan now has a multiparty system, a free press, and freedoms that are comparable to those we enjoy. Its Parliament is at least as confrontational as is our Congress, and on March 23, there will be an election for President with the incumbent President, Lee Teng-hui, ahead in the polls. It is significant that he is a native Taiwanese. Taiwan has been our seventh-leading trading partner and is No. 2 in the world in holding foreign currency reserves.
Here is where our zip-zagging comes in. At least on paper, we applaud democracies and say we will support them, and we frown upon dictatorships. But the Shanghai communique states that the United States will recognize only one China. And so we have turned a diplomatic cold shoulder to Taiwan, showing greater sensitivity to a dictatorship than to a democracy.
In terms of power, it is not a choice of two equals. For the same reasons that many in the State Department and Defense Department did not want to recognize
Israel, which had significantly more-numerous Arabs as neighbors, and have had a tilt toward Turkey in her difficulties with less-numerous and less-powerful neighbors in Greece and Armenia, so there are many in key positions who say--once again--that the choices should not be made on the merits but on the numbers and the potential power of the two governments. China has 1.2 billion people, and Taiwan has 21 million.
However, there is something that makes many of us uncomfortable when the cold calculations of population and power are used as the overriding criteria in deciding whom we befriend. When we said, as we did for a period, that President Lee, the chief executive of a democracy, could not come to Cornell University for a reunion of his class because it might offend China, it showed weakness and lack of support for our ideals. Eventually, President Clinton reversed that decision, and I applaud him for it.
With an election in Taiwan coming soon, the Chinese Government, which certainly must be a top contestant in the bad public relations field, has been making military noises that cause apprehension in Asia and concern everywhere--apparently in a heavy-handed attempt to influence the Taiwanese elections.
Complicating the Chinese situation is that they face a transition in leadership, and no potential leader wants to look weak on the issue of absorbing Taiwan into the mainland. So leaders and potential leaders try to one-up each other in sounding tough on Taiwan. The irony is that tough talk makes an eventual peaceful reunion of the two governments less likely.
While it is probable that China will not invade Taiwan in the near future, or launch a missile attack, people struggling for leadership power sometimes do irrational things. And public officials are risk-takers. No one becomes a United States Senator without taking risks, and no one moves into leadership in China without taking risks. What has to be demonstrated to China is that their belligerent talk and actions are creating hostility around the world and that an invasion or missile strike would be a disaster for the Chinese leadership and the Chinese people.
The position of the United States should be one of firmness and patience as China goes through this leadership change, evidencing our strong desire for friendship, but also our determined opposition to the use of force to achieve change. The lesson of history is that dictators who seize territory and receive praise for it from their own controlled media are not likely to have their appetite satisfied with one bite of land. If China should turn militaristic and seize Taiwan, that would be only the first acquisition. Mongolia to the north is a likely next target, and as we should have learned from Hitler, dictators can always find some historic justification for further actions.
Editorial voices from the New York Times to the Washington Post to the Chicago Tribune to the Los Angeles Times--all newspapers that have been friendly to China--have denounced that nation's belligerent noises. And the sentiment in the Senate and House is equally clear.
What should we be doing?
Our policy should be clear and firm, friendly but not patronizing, toward both governments.
The United States should enunciate a defense policy--joined in, ideally, by other governments--that military actions such as an invasion or missile strike would evoke a military response from us. I personally would favor a strong response with air power by the United States and other nations, if an attempt were made to invade Taiwan or an appropriate military response if they launch a missile attack, but the means of responding militarily do not need to be spelled out. I do not believe an invasion or an air or missile attack are likely in 1996, but any future leaders who may emerge in China should be put on notice. Secretary of Defense William Perry has hinted at that possibility, and the presence of a United States aircraft carrier in the international waters between China and Taiwan is a good signal. But hints are not enough. The Los Angeles Times editorially praised Perry for his statement as `the strongest indication that the United States might intervene if China attacked Taiwan.' The best way of preventing military action is to move beyond `might.' We should state our posture unequivocally. No military leader should even consider gambling on our hesitancy. Our able Ambassador to China, James Sasser--who I once encourage to run for President--should quietly meet with their leaders and tell them we are serious about that message and that the belligerent noises are hurting
the Chinese image around the world.
Another reason for doing this is that other Asian nations have serious questions about our military resolve, not our military capability. They see a few terrorists chasing us out of Somalia; they note that until recently, we were long on talk and short on action in Bosnia; and they see us quake when the Chinese Government growls. If our policy in this situation is not more clear and more firm, inevitably, Japan and other nations will invest significantly more in weapons and defense personnel, and an arms race in Asia will be accelerated. That is in no one's interests, other than the arms manufacturers. The United States has assured Japan and other Asian nations that we would come to their defense if attacked--but we also once gave that assurance to Taiwan. The nations of Asia are asking a fundamental question: Can they count on the United States?
Defense Secretary Perry has suggested that the top security officials of Asia should get together regularly in order to reduce tensions and increase understanding, an idea somewhat similar to Senator Sam Nunn's suggestions some years ago about Soviet and United States military leaders exchanging visits. The Nunn initiative produced some lessening of tensions. If China declines such a suggestion, nothing will have been lost. But anxieties among the nations of that area will diminish if China accepts such an invitation.
If China continues a policy of sending missiles to Pakistan and conducting military exercises near Taiwan, the United States should reexamine our trade policies, which now are heavily weighted in China's direction. China has a huge $34 billion trade surplus with the United States. We can ask organizations like the World Bank, which in 1994 made a $925 million, interest-free loan to China through the International Development Association, to act with greater prudence toward China. IDA loans generally go to poor nations; the average recipient country's per capita income is $382 a year. China's average of $530 is well above that, and China has foreign reserves of approximately $70 billion. When China's bellicosity toward Taiwan is combined with human rights abuses, the picture painted is not good. Our relationship should be correct but not condescending or cowering. When China sells nuclear weapons technology to Pakistan our response should be clear, not quavering. Tough nonmilitary means of sending a message to China's leadership may need to be used.
If China's leaders will lighten up a bit, and see their present foreign policy orientation as self-defeating, there is no reason China and the United States cannot have a good, healthy, and fruitful relationship that will help the people of both of our countries. If China reaches out with a friendly hand toward Taiwan, rather than with a fist, China will make gains economically and politically.
In the meantime, we should welcome visits by Taiwan's leaders to the United States and by our leaders to that Government. We should stop playing games, and stop treating Taiwan as if it is a relative with a social disease. Because of past policy errors on our part, formal recognition in the immediate future is not advisable, at least until the Chinese leadership situation is sealed. But we should encourage Taiwanese participation in international organizations, and do whatever else we might do to encourage a friendly Government that is both a healthy trading partner and democracy.
And when areas of uncertainty arise, as they inevitably will, the United States should remember our ideals, and do what we can to further the cause of human rights and democracy, not as a nation that has achieved perfection--we obviously have not--but as a country that wants to give opportunity to people everywhere to select their governments. When we stray from our ideals, everyone loses.
Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
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Mr. BOND. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Gorton). Without objection, it is so ordered.
END
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