Frank Wolf

Mr. WOLF

Mr. WOLF. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of the resolution and in opposition to PNTR. In some respects, listening to the debate in my office and reading about it, this reminds me of the time when Winston Churchill used to rise in the House of Commons to talk about the threat of Nazi Germany. They did not listen to Winston Churchill; and frankly, I do not think the country is listening today. This is an issue of values. Mary McCrory in The Washington Post said the other day in her column, ``We talk human rights, but we act like shopkeepers. We are listening to the cash register.'' We are listening to the sounds of the cash register, but we are not listening to the Catholic bishops, ten of them, that are in jail, and one because he gave holy communion to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Smith), and he still has not gotten out. We are not listening to the sounds of agony of the Protestant pastors. Those who said they care about the church and the persecution, we listen to the sound of the cash registers. They get down here and talk about the Dalai Lama in Tibet. I have been there and I have seen the persecution of the Muslims, but we are listening to the cash registers. Harry Wu will tell us, when the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Smith) and I went to Beijing Prison Number 1, where there were 40 Tiananmen Square demonstrators, and some are still there, but we listen to the sounds of the cash registers. For this side of the aisle, we name buildings after Ronald Reagan, but if we want to honor Ronald Reagan we should vote NTR down. Ronald Reagan not only did not give MFN to the Soviet Union; in 1986, he took away MFN for Romania. It was my bill, and the bill of the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Smith) and the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Hall). Ronald Reagan understood. He never gave it to them. He talked about values. The Soviet Union did not because we gave them MFN, the Soviet Union fell because Ronald Reagan stood up to them, the Pope stood up to them, the AFL-CIO and Lane Kirkland stood up to them, and not just grant them trade. We talk about freedom,we talk about human rights. But as Mary McCrory said, ``Frankly, this Congress and this country,'' and quite frankly, the Bush administration, the Bush administration had better be careful it does not emulate the Clinton administration. Clinton talked about it but did nothing about it. This administration had better be careful. We talk about human rights, we act like shopkeepers. We are just listening to the cash registers, not to the bishops, not to the pastors, not to the Members of Congress, not to the people in the slave labor camps. There are more slave labor camps in China today than there were when Solzhenitsyn wrote the book Gulag Archipelago. Let us listen to them and not to the cash registers. Mr. Speaker, I think it is time we as a legislative body face reality about the People's Republic of China. We've annually debated trade relations with China. We've heard about human rights abuses, religious persecution, nuclear arms sales. And it has annually been the will of the Congress that we engage in trade with China with the expectation that human rights would improve and that China would get on the road to democracy. But the expectations have fallen far short. As we have increased trade, the human rights situation in China has grown worse. For the past two years, the Department of State's annual report on human rights in China has stated this clearly, saying: ``the Government's poor human rights record has deteriorated markedly'' and ``the Government's poor human rights record worsened, and it continued to commit numerous serious abuses.'' Giving China most favored nation status hasn't changed for the better the lives of thousands of men and women languishing in forced labor prison camps. Human rights violations in China are about people who are suffering. Human rights violations in China are about people of faith being thrown into a dismal prison cell because of their faith. When China violates its own citizens' human rights, people die, people suffer and families are torn apart. I recently read the graphic testimony of a Chinese doctor who participated in the removal of organs and skin from executed prisoners in China. Dr. Wang Guoqi was a skin and burn specialist employed at a People's Liberation Army hospital. He recently testified before the House International Relations Subcommittee on International Organizations, and Human Rights on the Government of China's involvement in the execution, extraction, and trafficking of prisoner's organs. Dr. Wang writes that his work ``required me to remove skin and corneas from the corpses of over one hundred executed prisoners, and, on a couple of occasions, victims of intentionally botched executions.'' What kind of government skins alive and sells the organs of its own citizens? The Government of China also persecutes and imprisons people because of their religious beliefs. The U.S. Department of State recently sent me a letter, on the status of religious freedom in China, which I enclose for the record. This letter states that the Government of China persecutes believers of many faiths, including Roman Catholics, Muslims, Tibetan Buddhists and Protestant Christians. It is estimated that some ``ten Catholic Bishops, scores of Catholic priests and [Protestant] house church leaders, 100-300 Tibetan Buddhists, hundreds (perhaps thousands) of Falun Gong adherents, and an unknown but possible significant number of Muslims are in various forms of detention in China for the expression of their religious or spiritual beliefs.'' What kind of government imprisons its nation's religious leaders? Compass Direct, a news service that monitors international religious freedom reports that ``Christian leaders in both the unofficial house churches and the registered `Three Self' churches in eastern China confirmed . . . that there is increased pressure against the church in China.'' When China violates its own citizens' human rights, people die, people suffer and families are torn apart. Today is the 159th day a mother and wife and permanent U.S. resident has spent in a Chinese jail. Dr. Gao Zhan is a researcher at American University here in Washington, D.C. She is my constituent. She studies women's issues. One hundred and fifty-nine days ago, Chinese authorities detained Gao Zhan and her husband and their 5-year-old son, Andrew. In the matter of an instant, this happy young family was torn apart by the regime in Beijing. A 5-year-old child was taken from his parents, a young couple was divided by prison walls and armed guards. Imagine how you would feel if the Government of China did this to your family. Imagine how you would feel if the Government of China put your 5-year-old son in prison. What kind of government imprisons mothers who are academic experts on women's issues? News reports indicate that the Government of China is due to deport American citizen Li Shaomin, whom the Chinese have imprisoned for several months and whom they recently convicted of espionage. While I am hopeful that Li Shaomin will be released, I also call on the Chinese Government to immediately release Gao Zhan, mother, scholar and devoted wife. I also call on the government of China to release the remaining American permanent residents and citizens it has arrested on trumped-up charges, including Wu Jianmin, Tan Guangguang, Teng Chunyan, Liu Yaping and others. Last year during the debate on PNTR, I expressed concern ``about the alliance that seems to be forming between China and Russia against the U.S.'' Now, this week, Russia and China have signed a treaty of ``Friendship and Cooperation'' that I enclose for the Record. Article 9 of this treaty outlines what China and Russia mean by agreeing to ``friendship'' and ``cooperation'': Article 9. If one party to the treaty believes that there is a threat of aggression menacing peace, wrecking peace, and involving its security interests and is aimed at one of the parties, the two parties will immediately make contact and hold consultations in order to eliminate the threat that has arisen. China is purchasing sophisticated weapons systems from Russia that could place in harm's way, the lives of U.S. service members and U.S. capabilities in Asia. Russia has sold China an ``estimated $1.5 billion worth of weapons contracts last year alone,'' according to a July 12 article from Jane's Defense Weekly. Jane's also reports that ``strategic cooperation between Beijing and Moscow has also extended beyond their bilateral relationship to include neighboring states . . . for co-operation on military and other issues.'' Jane's also reports that the PLA has increased its official defense budget by 18 percent this year and that ``the [Chinese] military enjoys additional funding from other classified government programmes, such as for foreign arms procurements and weapons research and development.'' China has exported weapons of mass destruction and missiles in violation of treaty commitments. The director of the CIA has said that China remains a ``key supplier'' of these weapons to Pakistan, Iran and North Korea. Other reports indicate China has passed on similar weapons and technology to Libya and Syria. If one of these countries is involved in a conflict, it is very possible that these weapons of mass destruction could be targeted against American troops. There have been numerous reports that the Chinese military views the U.S. as its primary threat. Evidence of this militaristic view toward the U.S. may be seen in China's unacceptable behavior in the downing of the U.S. surveillance aircraft and detainment of the crew. China's behavior in this incident and its subsequent piecemeal dismemberment of the aircraft by the Chinese is an affront to the U.S. and is further evidence that China views the U.S. as a threat. In light of the downing and detainment of the U.S. surveillance aircraft and crew, in light of the new Russian-Chinese treaty, in light of China's increased military budget, because of China's proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, because of China's viewing the U.S. as being their primary threat, why would Congress want to give China normal trade relations (NTR) and all the benefits that come with NTR? Giving China NTR will give away any leverage the U.S. has on these and other issues of concern. Successive Presidents and previous Congresses have acted to trade with the People's Republic of China expecting China's human rights record to improve and the growth of democracy. After nearly two decades in which China has received most favored nation status, it is clear religious freedom, human rights and democracy have been given lip service by the Chinese government. If the U.S. wants to help bring democracy to China, it cannot continue to give China a blank check in the form of normalized trade relations. As Lawrence F. Kaplan writes in a July 9 article from The New Republic, ``. . . to pretend we can democratize China by means of economics is, finally, a self-serving conceit. Democracy is a political choice, an act of will. Someone, not something must create it.'' I enclose it for the record. It is clear that many years of giving China NTR has not helped advance democracy in China. Arguably, giving China NTR has made the prospects for democracy in China worse and may actually be standing in the way of creating democracy in China. It is time to try something new in our China policy. If the U.S. wants to see the growth of democracy and see China's human rights record to improve, the U.S. ought to review trade relations with China on an annual basis, until the Chinese government proves that it will treat its own people, its mothers, fathers, religious leaders and even common criminals with the dignity, compassion and respect that all human life deserves. Mr. Speaker, I include for the Record an article and a letter relating to human rights and trade with China: Why Trade Won't Bring Democracy to China (By Lawrence F. Kaplan) On February 25, business professor and writer Li Shaomin left his home in Hong Kong to visit a friend in the mainland city of Shenzhen. His wife and nine-year-old daughter haven't heard from him since. That's because, for four months now, Li has been rotting in a Chinese prison, where he stands accused of spying for Taiwan. Never mind that Li is an American citizen. And never mind that the theme of his writings, published in subversive organs like the U.S.-China Business Council's China Business Review, is optimism about China's investment climate. Li, it turns out, proved too optimistic for his own good. In addition to rewarding foreign investors, he believed that China's economic growth would create, as he put it in a 1999 article, a ``rule-based governance system.'' But as Li has since discovered, China's leaders have other plans. Will American officials ever make the same discovery? Like Li, Washington's most influential commentators, politicians, and China hands claim we can rely on the market to transform China. According to this new orthodoxy, what counts is not China's political choices but rather its economic orientation, particularly its degree of integration into the global economy. The cliche has had a narcotic effect on President Bush, who, nearly every time he's asked about China, suggests that trade will accomplish the broader aims of American policy. Bush hasn't revived Bill Clinton's recklessly historical claim that the United States can build ``peace through trade, investment, and commerce.'' He has, however, latched onto another of his predecessor's high-minded rationales for selling Big Macs to Beijing--namely, that commerce will act, in Clinton's words, as ``a force for change in China, exposing China to our ideas and our ideals.'' In this telling, capitalism isn't merely a necessary precondition for democracy in China. It's a sufficient one. Or, as Bush puts it, ``Trade freely with China, and time is on our side.'' As Congress prepares to vote for the last time on renewing China's normal trading relations (Beijing's impending entry into the World Trade Organization will put an end to the annual ritual), you'll be hearing the argument a lot: To promote democracy, the United States needn't apply more political pressure to China. All we need to do is more business there. Alas, the historical record isn't quite so clear. Tolerant cultural traditions, British colonization, a strong civil society, international pressure, American military occupation and political influence--these are just a few of the explanations scholars credit as the source of freedom in various parts of the world. And even when economic conditions do hasten the arrival of democracy, it's not always obvious which ones. After all, if economic factors can be said to account for democracy's most dramatic advance--the implosion of the Soviet Union and its Communist satellites--surely the most important factor was economic collapse. And if not every democracy emerged through capitalism, it's also true that not every capitalist economy has produced a democratic government. One hundred years ago in Germany and Japan, 30 years ago in countries such as Argentina and Brazil, and today in places like Singapore and Malaysia, capitalist development has buttressed, rather than undermined, authoritarian regimes. And these models are beginning to look a lot more like contemporary China than the more optimistic cases cited by Beijing's American enthusiasts. In none of these cautionary examples did the free market do the three things businessmen say it always does: weaken the coercive power of the state, create a democratically minded middle class, or expose the populace to liberal ideals from abroad. It isn't doing them in China either. One of the most important ways capitalism should foster democracy is by diminishing the power of the state. Or, as Milton Friedman put it in Capitalism and Freedom. ``[t]he kind of economic organization that provides economic freedom directly, namely, competitive capitalism, also promotes political freedom because it separates economic power from political power and in this way enables the one to offset the other.'' In his own way, Bush makes the same point about China: ``I believe a whiff of freedom in the marketplace will cause there to be more demand for democracy.'' But the theory isn't working so well in the People's Republic, whose brand of capitalism isn't quite what Adam Smith had in mind. China's market system derives, instead, from a pathological model of economic development. Reeling from the economic devastation of the Mao era, Deng Xiaoping and his fellow party leaders in the late 1970s set China on a course toward ``market socialism.'' The idea was essentially the same one that guided the New Economic Policy in Soviet Russia 50 years before: a mix of economic liberalization and political repression, which would boost China's economy without weakening the Communist Party. And so, while leaving the party in control of China's political life, Deng junked many of the economy's command mechanisms--granting state-owned enterprises more autonomy, opening the country to limited investment, and replacing aging commissars with a semiprofessional bureaucracy. The recipe worked well: China has racked up astronomical growth rates ever since. And democracy seems as far away as ever. The reason isn't simply that government repression keeps economic freedom from yielding political freedom. It's that China's brand of economic reform contains ingredients that hinder--and were consciously devised to hinder--political reform. The most obvious is that, just as the state retains a monopoly on the levers of coercion, it also remains perched atop the commanding heights of China's economy. True, China has been gradually divesting itself of state-owned enterprises, and the process should quicken once China enters the World Trade Organization (WTO). But Beijing's leaders have said they will continue to support China's most competitive and critical industries. Taking a cue from authoritarian South Korea during the 1980's, China's leaders have proposed sponsoring industrial conglomerates in crucial sectors of the economy, transformed industrial ministries into ``general associations,'' merged failing state-owned firms with more successful ones, and established organizations to, as Chinese economist Xue Muqiao has put it, ``serve as a bridge between the state and the enterprises.'' But that's where any similarities with South Korea end. Unlike South Korea, the Philippines, and Taiwan, which evolved from authoritarianism (and did so, significantly, as de facto protectorates of the United States), China even today has no effective system of property rights--a signature trait that distinguishes its Communist regime from traditional authoritarian ones. The absence of a private- property regime in China means that, at the end of the day, the state controls nearly the entire edifice on which China's ``free'' markets rest. It also means that China's brand of capitalism blurs, rather than clarifies, the distinction between the public and the private realms on which political liberty depends. Nor is that the only requisite for democracy that China's markets lack. As the imprisonment of Li Shaomin and thousands of other political prisoners attests, capitalism in the PRC still operates within the confines of an arbitrary legal order and a party-controlled court system. ``China is still a lawless environment,'' says University of Pennsylvania sinologist Arthur Waldron. ``Whether in terms of individual rights or the rights of entrepreneurs, interests are protected not by institutions but by special relationships with those in power.'' Before he was arrested, Li diagnosed this condition as ``relation-based capitalism.'' What he meant was that relations with government officials, not property rights or the rule of law, underpin the Chinese market. Because the political foundations of China's economy remain the exclusive property of the state, China's entrepreneurs operate with a few degrees of separation, but without true autonomy, from the government. Hence, capital, licenses, and contracts flow to those with connections to officials and to their friends and relatives, who, in turn, maintain close relations with, and remain beholden to, the regime. Their firms operate, in the words of Hong Kong-based China specialist David Sweig, ``[l]ike barnacles on ships, . . . draw[ing] their sustenance from their parastatal relationships with the ministries from which they were spun off.'' Helping to keep all these distortions in place are Deng's functionaries, who now constitute the world's largest bureaucracy and still control the everyday levers of the Chinese economy. Today, they function as the engines and administrators of a market increasingly driven by skimming off the top. The foreign-trade sector offers particularly easy pickings. In 1995, for instance, the World Bank found that while China's nominal tariff rate was 32 percent, only a 6 percent rate was officially collected. Presumably, much of the difference went into the pockets of Chinese officials. And even though WTO accession will reduce opportunities for rent-seeking from inflated trade tariffs, China's bureaucracy will be able to continue siphoning funds from distorted interest rates, the foreign exchange markets, and virtually any business transaction that requires its involvement--which is to say, nearly every business transaction. Nor is the problem merely the corrupting influence these bureaucrats wield over China's markets. The larger problem is that, whereas in the United States the private sector wields enormous influence over the political class, in China the reverse is true. For precisely this reason, Washington's celebrations of the democratic potential of the new Chinese ``middle class'' may be premature. ``Entrepreneurs, once condemned as `counterrevolutionaries,' are now the instruments of reform. . . . [T]his middle class will eventually demand broad acceptance of democratic values,'' House Majority Whip Tom DeLay insisted last year. Reading from the same script, President Bush declares that trade with China will ``help an entrepreneurial class and a freedom-loving class grow and burgeon and become viable.'' Neither DeLay nor Bush, needless to say, invented the theory that middle classes have nothing to lose but their chains. In the first serious attempt to subject the ties between economic and political liberalization to empirical scrutiny, Seymour Martin Lipset published a study in 1959, Some Social Requisites of Democracy, which found that economic development led to, among other things, higher levels of income equality, education, and, most important, the emergence of a socially moderate middle class--all factors that promote democratization. More recent studies have found that rising incomes also tend to correlate with participation in voluntary organizations and other institutions of ``civil society,'' which further weakens the coercive power of the state. But middle classes aren't always socially moderate, and they don't always oppose the state. Under certain conditions, late modernizing economies breed middle classes that actively oppose political change. In each of these cases, a strong state, not the market, dictates the terms of economic modernization. And, in each case, an emerging entrepreneurial class too weak to govern on its own allies itself--economically and, more importantly, politically-- with a reactionary government and against threats to the established order. In his now-classic study Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy, sociologist Barrington Moore famously revealed that, in these ``revolutions from above,'' capitalist transformations weakened rather than strengthened liberalism. In the case of nineteenth-century Japan, Moore writes that the aim of those in power was to ``preserve as much as possible of the advantages the ruling class had enjoyed under the ancient regime, cutting away just enough . . . to preserve the state, since they would otherwise lose everything.'' Japan's rulers could do this only with the aid of a commercial class, which eagerly complied, exchanging its political aspirations for profits. On this point, at least, Marx and Engels had things right. Describing the 1848 revolution in Germany, they traced its failure partly to the fact that, at the end of the day, entrepreneurs threw their support not behind the liberal insurrectionists but behind the state that was the source of their enrichment. Much the same process is unfolding in China, where economic and political power remain deeply entwined. In fact, China's case is even more worrisome than its historical antecedents. In Germany and Japan, after all, an entrepreneurial class predated the state's modernization efforts, enjoyed property rights, and as a result, possessed at least some autonomous identity, In China, which killed off its commercial class in the 1950s, the state had to create a new one. Thus China's emerging bourgeoisie consist over whelmingly of state officials, their friends and business partners, and--to the extent they climbed the economic ladder independently-- entrepreneurs who rely on connections with the official bureaucracy for there livelihoods. ``It is improbable, to say the least,'' historian Maurice Meisner writes in The Deng Xiaoping Era: An Inquiry Into the Fate of Chinese Socialism, ``that a bourgeoisie whose economic fortunes are so dependent on the political fortunes of the Communist state is likely to mount a serious challenge to the authority of that state . . . the members of China's new bourgeoisie emerge more as agents of the state than as potential antagonists.'' A steady diet of chauvinistic nationalism hasn't helped. In the aftermath of the Tiananmen Square massacre, party leaders launched a ``patriotism'' campaign, a sentiment they defined as ``loving the state'' as well as the Communist Party. As the Shanghai-based scholar and party apologist Xiao Gongqin explains, ``[T]he overriding issue of China's modernization is how, under new historical circumstances, to find new resources of legitimacy so as to achieve social and moral integration in the process of social transition.'' To Xiao and others like him, the answer is nationalism. And, as anyone who turned on a television during the recent EP-3 episode may have noticed, it's working. Indeed, independent opinion polling conducted by the Public Opinion Research Institute of People's University (in association with Western researchers, who published their findings in 1997), indicate greater public support for China's Communist regime than similar surveys found a decade earlier. And, contrary to what development theory might suggest, the new nationalism appears to have infected the middle class--particularly university students and intellectuals--more acutely than it has China's workers and farmers. ``The [closeness of the] relationship between the party and intellectuals is as bad as in the Cultural Revolution,'' a former official in the party's propaganda arm noted in 1997. Even many of China's exiled dissidents have fallen under its spell. In addition to being independent of the regime and predisposed toward liberal values, China's commercial class is supposed to be busily erecting an independent civil society. But, just as China's Communist system restricts private property, it prohibits independent churches and labor unions, truly autonomous social organizations, and any other civic institutions that might plausibly compete with the state. Indeed, China's leaders seem to have read Robert Putnam's Bowling Alone and the rest of the civil-society canon--and decided to do exactly the reverse of what the literature recommends. ``Peasants will establish peasants' organizations as well, then China will become another Poland,'' senior party official Yao Yilin reportedly warned during the Tiananmen protests. To make sure this fear never comes true, China's leaders have dealt with any hint of an emerging civil society in one of two ways: repression or co- optation. Some forbidden organizaions--such as Falun Gong, the Roman Catholic Church, independent labor unions, and organizations associated with the 1989 democracy movement-- find their members routinely imprisoned and tortured. Others, such as the Association of Urban Unemployed, are merely monitored and harassed. And as for the officially sanctioned organizations that impress so many Western observers, they mostly constitute a Potemkin facade. ``[A]lmost every ostensibly independent organization--institutes, foundations, consultancies--is linked into the party-state network,'' says Columbia University sinologist Andrew Nathan. Hence, Beijing's Ministry of Civil Affairs monitors even sports clubs and business associations and requires all such groups to register with the government. The same kind of misreading often characterizes celebrations of rural China's ``village committees,'' whose democratic potential the engagement lobby routinely touts. Business Week discerns in them evidence ``of the grassroots democracy beginning to take hold in China.'' But that's not quite right. China's leaders restrict committee elections to the countryside and, even there, to the most local level. Nor, having been legally sanctioned 14 years ago, do they constitute a recent development. More important, China's leaders don't see the elections the way their American interpreters do. In proposing them, says Jude Howell, co- author of In Search of Civil Society: Market Reform and Social Change in Contemporary China, party elites argued that elected village leaders ``would find it easier to implement central government policy and in particular persuade villagers to deliver grain and taxes and abide by family planning policy. Village self-governance would thus foster social stability and order and facilitate the implementation of national policy. By recruiting newly elected popular and entrepreneurial village leaders, the Party could strengthen its roots at the grassroots level and bolster its legitimacy in the eyes of the rural residents.'' Which is exactly what it has done. In races for village committee chairs, the Ministry of Civil Affairs allows only two candidates to stand for office, and until recently many townships nominated only one. Local party secretaries and officials often push their favored choice, and most committee members are also members of the Communist Party, to which they remain accountable. Should a nonparty member be elected, he must accept the guidance of the Communist Party, which, in any case, immediately sets about recruiting him. As for those rare committee members who challenge local party officials, their success may be gleaned from the fate of elected committee members from a village in Shandong province who in 1999 accused a local party secretary of corruption. All were promptly arrested. Still, the very fact that China's leaders feel compelled to bolster their legitimacy in the countryside is telling. Last month Beijing took the unusual step of releasing a report ``Studies of Contradictions Within the People Under New Conditions,'' which detailed a catalogue of ``collective protests and group incidents.'' What the report makes clear is that Beijing's leaders think China's growing pool of overtaxed farmers and unemployed workers, more than its newly moneyed elites, could become a threat to the regime. Fortunately for the authorities, with no political opposition to channel labor unrest into a coherent movement, protests tend to be narrow in purpose and poorly coordinated. And the wheels of repression have already begun to grind, with Beijing launching a ``strike hard'' campaign to quell any trouble. In any case, what these formerly state-employed workers have been demonstrating for is not less communism, but more--a return to the salad days of central planning. Which brings us to the final tenet of the engagement lobby: that commerce exposes China to the ideals of its trading partners, particularly those of the United States. As House Majority Leader Dick Armey has put it, ``Freedom to trade is the great subversive and liberating force in human history.'' Or, as Clinton National Security Adviser Sandy Berger burbled in 1997, ``The fellow travelers of the new global economy-- computers and modems, faxes and photocopiers, increased contacts and binding contracts--carry with them the seeds of change.'' But the Chinese disagree. To begin with, they don't import much. And economists predict that won't change dramatically once they've joined the WTO, since China's leaders have committed themselves to the kind of export- oriented, mercantilist growth model that South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan pursued in decades past. Last year, for instance, China exported $100 billion in goods and services to the United States and only imported $16 billion worth. Hence, for every six modems it sent to America, Sandy Berger sent back only one. To be sure, that one modem may carry with it seeds of change. Bush, for instance, says, ``If the Internet were to take hold in China, freedom's genie will be out of the bottle.'' Alas, through links to Chinese service providers, Beijing tightly controls all access to the Web. And Western investors in China's information networks have eagerly pitched in. One Chinese Internet portal, bankrolled by Intel and Goldman Sachs, greets users with a helpful reminder to avoid ``topics which damage the reputation of the state'' and warns that it will be ``obliged to report you to the Public Security Bureau'' if you don't. But Goldman Sachs needn't worry. If anything, China's recent experience lends credence to the pessimistic theories of an earlier era, which held that nations shape the uses of technology rather than the other ways around. Thus Beijing blocks access to damaging ``topics'' and to Western news sources like The New York Times, The Washington Post, and this magazine. It also monitors e-mail exchanges and has arrested Internet users who have tried to elude state restrictions. And, in ways that would make Joseph Goebbels blush, the government uses websites--and, of course, television, newspapers, and radio-- to dominate the circuits with its own propaganda. ``Much as many people might like to think the Internet is part of a bottom-up explosion of individualism in China, it is not,'' writes Peter Lovelock, a Hong Kong-based academic who studies the Internet's effect in the PRC. Instead, it provides ``an extraordinarily beneficial tool in the administration of China.'' And that tool was on vivid display during the EP-3 crisis, when China blocked access to Western news sources and censored chat rooms. American politicians describe foreign direct investment, too, as a potent agent of democratization. But, in this case, they're not even paraphrasing political science literature they haven't read because the literature makes no such claim. In fact, a 1983 study by the University of North Carolina's Kenneth Bollen found that levels of foreign trade concentration and penetration by multinational corporations have no significant effect on the correlation between economic development and democracy. In China's case, it's easy to understand why. Beijing requires foreign investors in many industries to cooperate in joint ventures with Chinese partners, most of whom enjoy close ties to the government. These firms remain insulated mainly in three coastal enclaves and in ``special economic zones'' set apart from the larger Chinese economy. Moreover, they export a majority of their goods--which is to say, they send most of their ``seeds of change'' abroad. At the same time, their capital largely substitutes for domestic capital (foreign-owned firms generate half of all Chinese exports), providing a much- needed blood transfusion for China's rulers, who use it to accumulate reserves of hard currency, meet social welfare obligations, and otherwise strengthen their rule. Nor is it clear that U.S. companies even want China to change. If anything, growing levels of U.S. investment have created an American interest in maintaining China's status quo. Hence, far from criticizing China's rulers, Western captains of industry routinely parade through Beijing singing the praises of the Communist regime (and often inveighing against its detractors), while they admonish America's leaders to take no action that might upset the exquisite sensibilities of China's politburo. Business first, democracy later. But ultimately the best measure of whether economic ties to the West have contributed to democratization may be gleaned from China's human rights record. Colin Powell insists, ``Trade with China is not only good economic policy; it is good human rights policy.'' Yet, rather than improve that record, the rapid expansion of China's trade ties to the outside world over the past decade has coincided with a worsening of political repression at home. Beijing launched its latest crackdown on dissent in 1999, and it continues to this day. The government has tortured, ``reeducated through labor,'' and otherwise persecuted thousands of people for crimes no greater than practicing breathing exercises, peacefully championing reforms, and exercising freedom of expression, association, or worship. It has arrested Chinese- American scholars like Li Shaomin on trumped-up charges, closed down newspapers, and intimidated and threatened dissidents. Nor is it true that linking trade and human rights will necessarily prove counterproductive. When Congress approved trade sanctions against Beijing in the aftermath of Tiananmen, China's leaders responded by releasing more than 800 political prisoners, lifting martial law in Beijing, entering into talks with the United States, and even debating among themselves the proper role of human rights. As soon as American pressure eased, so did China's reciprocal gestures. Turning a blind eye to Beijing's depredations may make economic sense. But to pretend we can democratize China by means of economics is, finally, a self-serving conceit. Democracy is a political choice, an act of will. Someone, not something, must create it. Often that someone is a single leader--a Mikhail Gorbachev, a King Juan Carlos, or a Vaclav Havel. But such a man won't be found in China's current leadership. Other times, the pressure for democracy comes from a political opposition--the African National Congress in South Africa, Solidarity in Poland, or the marchers in Tiananmen Square. But there are no more marchers in Tiananmen Square. Pressure for democratization, however, can also come from abroad. And usually it comes from the United States or from nowhere at all. During the 1980s America applied diplomatic and economic pressure to repressive regimes from Poland to South Africa; intervened to prevent military coups in the Philippines, Peru, El Salvador, Honduras, and Bolivia; and loudly enshrined human rights and democracy in official policy. The United States played a pivotal and direct role in democratizing even countries like South Korea and Taiwan, which many China-engagers now tout as evidence that the market alone creates political freedom. Appropriately enough, the decade closed with democracy activists erecting a facsimile of the Statue of Liberty in Tiananmen Square. The commercialist view of China, by contrast, rests on no historical foundation; it is a libertarian fantasy. ``The linkage between development and rights is too loose, the threshold too high, the time frame too long, and the results too uncertain to make economic engagement a substitute for direct policy intervention,'' writes Columbia's Nathan. Yet make it a substitute is precisely what the United States has done. And, far from creating democracy, this subordination of political principle has created the justified impression of American hypocrisy and, worse, given U.S. policymakers an excuse to do nothing. Maybe the claim that we can bring liberty to China by chasing its markets will prove valid in the long run. But exactly how long is the long run? A political scientist at Stanford University says it ends in 2015, when, he predicts, China will be transformed into a democracy. Others say China will democratize before that. Still others say it may take a half-century or more. The answer matters. After all, while capitalist Germany and Japan eventually became democracies, it wasn't capitalism that democratized them, and it certainly wasn't worth the wait. In China's case, too, no one really knows what might happen as we wait for politics to catch up with economics. With the exception, perhaps, of Li Shaomin, who tested the link between economic and political liberalization in China for himself. He's still in jail.

Mr. WOLF

Mr. WOLF. Mr. Chairman, as the gentleman said, meetings are going on now. The administration has expressed concern, and we will be glad to work with both of the gentlemen with regard to the conference and language that the administration supports.

Mr. WOLF. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. I just want to thank the gentleman for his comments. When the year started, I did not really know the gentleman very well, but I think we have become friends. I look forward to the opportunity when I come up to visit my two children, who are living in New York City, to come over to the gentleman's congressional district and spend some time and take a look around. I do appreciate the gentleman's comments, and I want to thank him for his friendship and cooperation. I want to thank the staff on both sides of the aisle for the outstanding work they have done. And I want to thank all of the Members, every single solitary Member that spoke on both sides of the aisle, for the very positive contribution; and I would urge a strong vote for this bill on final passage. Sequential Votes Postponed in Committee of The Whole

Mr. WOLF. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. WOLF. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentlewoman from New York and the gentlewoman from Texas. The committee will evaluate the Houston after- school program for juveniles to determine whether it is an appropriate program to be funded through the Juvenile Justice grants in the bill. We will consider the gentlewoman's interest in the program as we move the bill through Congress.

Mr. WOLF. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. WOLF. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Souder). (Mr. SOUDER asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. WOLF. Mr. Chairman, I claim the time in opposition. I yield myself such time as I may consume, and I am going to just briefly make some comments. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment. The Department of Justice is very much opposed to the amendment. On May 14, 2001, a unanimous decision of the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that marijuana's designation as a controlled substance reaffirmed that marijuana has no medical benefits under Federal law. In 1998, the Congress emphasized its opposition to the recently enacted State marijuana laws and statutory provisions entitled ``Not Legalizing Marijuana for Medicinal Use'' and ``Rejection of Legalization of Drugs.'' In these provisions, Congress reiterated that drugs classified as a Schedule 1 controlled substance, as is marijuana, have a high potential for abuse, lack any currently accepted use as a medical treatment, or are unsafe, even under medical supervision. The gentleman's amendment would restrict the Department of Justice, in particular DEA, from using the funds to investigate people who use marijuana under the guise of medical purposes. I believe that would be the wrong signal to send. I oppose the amendment. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WOLF. I insist on my point of order against the amendment because it proposes to change existing law and constitutes legislation in an appropriations bill and, therefore, it violates clause 2 of Rule XXI.

Mr. WOLF. Mr. Chairman, I insist on my point of order.

Mr. WOLF. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume to submit the testimony that was given before the subcommittee under the jurisdiction of the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Ros-Lehtinen), which verifies everything that the gentleman said. Testimony of Wang Guoqi, Former Doctor at a Chinese People's Liberation Army Hospital My name is Wang Guoqi and I am a 38-year-old physician from the People's Republic of China. In 1981, after standard childhood schooling and graduation, I joined the People's Liberation Army. By 1984, I was studying medicine at the Paramilitary Police Paramedical School. I received advanced degrees in Surgery and Human Tissue Studies, and consequently became a specialist in the burn victims unit at the Paramilitary Police Tianjin General Brigade Hospital in Tianjin. My work required me to remove skin and corneas from the corpses of over one hundred executed prisoners, and, on a couple of occasions, victims of intentionally botched executions. It is with deep regret and remorse for my actions that I stand here today testifying against the practices of organ and tissue sales from death row prisoners. My involvement in harvesting the skin from prisoners began while performing research on cadavers at the Beijing People's Liberation Army Surgeons Advanced Studies School, in Beijing's 304th Hospital. This hospital is directly subordinate to the PLA, and so connections between doctors and officers were very close. In order to secure a corpse from the execution grounds, security officers and court units were given ``red envelopes'' with cash amounting to anywhere between 200-500 RMB per corpse. Then, after execution, the body would be rushed to the autopsy room rather than the crematorium, and we would extract skin, kidneys, livers, bones, and corneas for research and experimental purposes. I learned the process of preserving human skin and tissue for burn victims, and skin was subsequently sold to needy burn victims for 10 RMB per square centimeter. After completing my studies in Beijing, and returning to Tianjin's Paramilitary Police General Brigade Hospital, I assisted hospital directors Liu Lingfeng and Song Heping in acquiring the necessary equipment to build China's first skin and tissue storehouse. Soon afterward, I established close ties with Section Chief Xing, a criminal investigator of the Tianjin Higher People's Court. Acquiring skin from executed prisoners usually took place around major holidays or during the government's Strike Hard campaigns, when prisoners would be executed in groups. Section Chief Xing would notify us of upcoming executions. We would put an order in for the number of corpses we'd like to dissect, and I would give him 300 RMB per cadaver. The money exchange took place at the Higher People's Court, and no receipts or evidence of the transaction would be exchanged. Once notified of an execution, our section would prepare all necessary equipment and arrive at the Beicang Crematorium in plain clothes with all official license plates on our vehicles replaced with civilian ones. This was done on orders of the criminal investigation section. Before removing the skin, we would cut off the ropes that bound the criminals' hands and remove their clothing. Each criminal had identification papers in his or her pocket that detailed the executes name, age, profession, work unit, address, and crime. Nowhere on these papers was there any mention of voluntary organ donation, and clearly the prisoners did not know how their bodies would be used after death. We had to work quickly in the crematorium, and 10-20 minutes were generally enough to remove all skin from a corpse. Whatever remained was passed over to the crematorium workers. Between five and eight times a year, the hospital would send a number of teams to execution sites to harvest skin. Each team could process up to four corpses, and they would take as much as was demanded by both our hospital and fraternal hospitals. Because this system allowed us to treat so many burn victims, our department became the most reputable and profitable department in Tianjin. Huge profits prompted our hospital to urge other departments to design similar programs. The urology department thus began its program of kidney transplant surgeries. The complexity of the surgery called for a price of $120-150,000 RMB per kidney. With such high prices, primarily wealthy or high-ranking people were able to buy kidneys. If they had the money, the first step would be to find a donor-recipient match. In the first case of kidney transplantation in August, 1990, I accompanied the urology surgeon to the higher court and prison to collect blood samples from four death-row prisoners. The policeman escorting us told the prisoners that we were there to check their health conditions; therefore, the prisoners did not know the purpose for their blood samples or that their organs might be up for sale. Out of the four samplings, one basic and sub-group blood match was found for the recipient, and the prisoner's kidneys were deemed fit for transplantation. Once a donor was confirmed, our hospital held a joint meeting with the urology department, burn surgery department, and operating room personnel. We scheduled tentative plans to prepare the recipient for the coming kidney and discussed concrete issues of transportation and personnel. Two days before execution, we received final confirmation from the higher court, and on the day of the execution, we arrived at the execution site in plain clothes. In the morning, the donating prisoner had received a heparin shot to prevent blood clotting and ease the organ extraction process. When all military personnel and condemned prisoners would arrive at the site, the organ-donating prisoner was brought forth for the first execution. At the execution site, a colleague, Xing Tongyi, and I were responsible for carrying the stretcher. Once the hand-cuffed and leg-ironed prisoner had been shot, a bailiff removed the leg irons. Xing Tongyi and I had 15 seconds to bring the executee to the waiting ambulance. Inside the ambulance, the best urologist surgeons removed both kidneys, and rushed back to the waiting recipient at the hospital. Meanwhile, our burn surgery department waited for the execution of the following three prisoners and followed their corpses to the crematorium where we removed skin in a small room next to the furnaces. Since our director had business ties with the Tianjin Ophthalmologic Hospital and Beijing's 304th Hospital, he instructed us to extract the executee's corneas as well. Although I performed this procedure nearly a hundred times in the following years, it was an incident in October 1995 that has tortured my conscience to no end. We were sent to Hebei Province to extract kidneys and skin. We arrived one day before the execution of a man sentenced to death for robbery and the murder of a would-be witness. Before execution, I administered a shot of heparin to prevent blood clotting to the prisoner. A nearby policeman told him it was a tranquilizer to prevent unnecessary suffering during the execution. The criminal responded by giving thanks to the government. At the site, the execution commander gave the order, ``Go!,'' and the prisoner was shot to the ground. Either because the executioner was nervous, aimed poorly, or intentionally misfired to keep the organs intact, the prisoner had not yet died, but instead lay convulsing on the ground. We were ordered to take him to the ambulance anyway where urologists Wang Zhifu, Zhao Qingling and Liu Oiyou extracted his kidneys quickly and precisely. When they finished, the prisoner was still breathing and his heart continued to beat. The execution commander asked if they might fire a second shot to finish him off, to which the country court staff replied, ``Save that shot. With both kidneys out, there is no way he can survive.'' The urologists rushed back to the hospital with the kidneys, the county staff and executioner left the scene, and eventually the paramilitary policemen disappeared as well. We burn surgeons remained inside the ambulance to harvest the skin. We could hear people outside the ambulance, and fearing it was the victim's family who might force their way inside, we left our job half-done, and the half-dead corpse was thrown in a plastic bag onto the flatbed of the crematorium truck. As we left in the ambulance, we were pelted by stones from behind. After this incident, I have had horrible, reoccurring nightmares. I have participated in a practice that serves the regime's political and economic goals far more than it benefits the patients. I have worked at execution sites over a dozen times, and have taken the skin from over one hundred prisoners in crematoriums. Whatever impact I have made in the lives of burn victims and transplant patients does not excuse the unethical and immoral manner of extracting organs. I resolved to no longer participate in the organ business, and my wife supported my decision. I submitted a written report requesting reassignment to another job. This request was flatly denied on the grounds that no other job matched my skills. I began to refuse to take part in outings to execution sites and crematoriums, to which the hospital responded by blaming and criticizing me for my refusals. I was forced to submit a pledge that I would never expose their practices of procuring organs and the process by which the organs and skin were preserved and sold for huge profits. They threatened me with severe consequences, and began to train my replacement. Until the day I left China in the spring of 2000, they were still harvesting organs from execution sites. I hereby expose all these terrible things to the light in the hope that this will help to put an end to this evil practice. Mr. Chairman, having said that, I think it is a good amendment and, hopefully, we can take it and fashion it and shape it so that when this final bill comes out it is in there, and I look forward to the meeting with INS to see how we can work this out. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. WOLF. Mr. Chairman, I yield 30 seconds to the gentleman from California (Mr. Cunningham).

Mr. WOLF. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Ros-Lehtinen).

Mr. WOLF. Mr. Chairman, I continue to reserve my point of order. Mr. Chairman, I want to commend the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Wu) for this amendment. We have been trying to be faithful on amendments that were out of order to object, just like we did on the last one. However, I will do everything I can to see that this is in the final bill. Here is a statement that was presented at a hearing before the Subcommittee on International Relations and Human Rights on June 27 by Wang Guoqi, a physician from the People's Republic of China. Mr. Wang was a skin and burn specialist at the Paramilitary Police General Brigade Hospital. He writes that his work ``required me to remove skin and corneas from the corpses of over 100 executed prisoners, and, on a couple of occasions, victims of intentionally botched executions.'' In very graphic examples, Mr. Wang describes how he has harvested the skin off of a man who was still living and breathing. This is one of the reasons why I am opposed to granting MFN or PNTR to the Chinese Government. The gentleman is exactly right, and we will do everything we can to see that his amendment in any way we possibly can is carried in the bill. The reason we are objecting on a point of order is in fairness to the others, the gentlewoman from California, the gentleman from Indiana and others, to maintain the consistency. But we will do everything we can. I think it is a good amendment, what the gentleman is trying to do. I would also like to have an opportunity to have INS and Justice and State maybe come up, or we can meet in the gentleman's office, whereby we can sit down to see how we can fashion something to see that the gentleman's purposes and goals of what he wants to do are accomplished. I thank the gentleman for offering the amendment. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WOLF. Mr. Chairman, I reserve a point of order, and I claim the time in opposition.

Mr. WOLF. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. WOLF. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Waters).

Mr. WOLF. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Cunningham).

Mr. WOLF. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Kirk).

Mr. WOLF. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, I oppose the amendment. It is not a maneuver. There are rules in the House. The amendment goes far beyond what is necessary to addressing the countries' AIDS crisis. The gentlewoman ought to take her energy and meet with Secretary Powell. The gentlewoman ought to take her energy and meet with the trade rep. The gentlewoman ought to take her energy and meet with President Bush at the White House. The gentlewoman ought to take her energy and advocate this up and down the country. We have rules. We have procedures. It is interesting. I find myself in agreement with much of what she says, but I do not find agreement in the approach that she has taken. And because I do not find myself in agreement with the approach that she has taken, we are going to oppose the amendment. Why does she not take her energy and meet with the Secretary of State. Has she made a request to meet with Secretary Powell? Why does she not take her energy and make a request to meet with the Trade Rep? Has she asked to meet with the Trade Rep? Why does she not do that and then by bringing people together, trying to resolve it with people, good people of faith, there may be a greater opportunity. Mr. Chairman, I oppose the amendment. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WOLF. Mr. Chairman, I object.

Mr. WOLF. Mr. Chairman, I object.

Mr. WOLF

Mr. WOLF. Mr. Speaker, I do not know. We will try to find out.

Mr. WOLF. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield, there are just a couple that are not.

Mr. WOLF. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that during further consideration of H.R. 2500 in the Committee of the Whole, pursuant to House Resolution 192 and the order of the House of July 17, 2001, each amendment shall not be subject to amendment (except that the chairman and ranking minority member of the Committee on Appropriations, or a designee, each may offer one pro forma amendment for the purpose of further debate on any pending amendment); amendments numbered 14, 26 shall be debatable only for 10 minutes equally divided and controlled by the proponent and an opponent; amendments numbered 3, 30, 6, 7, shall be debatable only for 20 minutes equally divided and controlled by the proponent and an opponent; and, lastly, amendment numbered 12 shall be debatable only for 60 minutes equally divided and controlled by the proponent and an opponent.