Question: What is your position on permanent normal trade relations with China? Should trade be linked to human rights improvements in Tibet, and lessening of religious persecution by Beijing? How would your administration react if China invaded Taiwan?
Submitted from Kelly of Worcester, Massachusetts through USATODAY.com (10/18/00)
Answer from Howard Phillips:
U.S.-China Policy Must Be Governed By The Constitution And Sound Moral Principle
Regarding Permanent Normal Trade Relations status for Red China, constitutionally no Congress can bind future Congresses
concerning trade policy. The Constitution stipulates that Congress shall regulate commerce with foreign nations. However, the reason we have an election every two years is so that the people can review the performance of the Congress.
So, permanent Most Favored Nation status for Red China is unconstitutional, even though it is supported by both major parties.
With respect to the human rights issue, we've been down this path before. In the 1930's Franklin D. Roosevelt accorded normal diplomatic relations to Joseph Stalin and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The effect was to legitimate Stalin's tyranny and to deliver a message to the people of the Soviet Union that they had no hope of throwing off that tyranny because the United States of America, the symbol of freedom in the world, was in alliance with the man who was then commonly regarded as the greatest despot in the world, Joe Stalin.
When we give special treatment to Communist China we are telling the Chinese Christians who are being persecuted and we are telling the parents who want to have more than one child, that they have no hope of throwing off that tyranny because the most powerful nation in the world is in league with their oppressors. For that reason alone it is wrong for us to give Most Favored Nation status to Red China, permanently or otherwise.
Regarding the Taiwan issue, recently under pressure from Congress the Clinton Administration made a decision to sell more weapons to Taiwan. However, they put a 'trigger lock' on those weapons by saying that the weapons that Taiwan purchases will be kept in the United States. That doesn't do the people of Free China much good in a Pearl Harbor scenario.
I have been to Taiwan. I happen to have been there once in 1983, on the very day that Ronald Reagan signed the Shanghai Communique in which he asserted that thenceforward the United States would steady diminish the quality and quantity of weapons to be provide to the free Chinese on Taiwan.
I spoke on Taiwan television that day and said that the people of the United States did not support that decision. I believe that we should enhance the ability of free China to provide for its own defense. They have a strong and vibrant economy. They are capable of defending themselves if we permit them to purchase the weapons they need to counter the numerical superiority enjoyed by the mainland communist Chinese.
You need more forces to attack successfully than to defend successfully. Without direct United States involvement, Free China can defend itself if we sell them the high tech weapons which will facilitate their necessary defense.
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