5
As an interloper
to this subcommittee, I want to commend the
chair and congratulate the chair and Ranking Member Bass of the
passage of AGOA today on the House floor.
When it comes to the greatest human rights deprivation by
China, it is probably the enormous trade deficit they run with the
United States. We are now engaged in this strategic and economic
dialogue. All the bigwigs from China are here. The entire State De-
partment is dedicated to them. Hundreds of pages of pronounce-
ments are being generated. I can’t find one that actually mentions
that we have a $343 billion trade deficit with China.
And I would point out that, while there are dozens and dozens
of meetings, none of them
are with Members of Congress, except
for the administration has created this Potemkin village situation
where Members of Congress are invited to participate only if they
do not speak to anyone from China. God forbid the Chinese find
out that there are people in the United States, unlike, perhaps, the
administration, who care about that I mentioned the $343 billion
trade deficit.
Now, as to the matter at hand, we have to focus on what effect
these educational relationships have with free speech in the United
States and free speech in China. One other issue that is mentioned
is, are we just cheapening the brand,
independent of human rights
and politics? Are we sending people over—are the Chinese learning
mathematics the same way they would learn at the home campus
here?
That, I think, is a little outside of government’s purview. You
know, there are Buicks being sold in China, and if GM wants to
make a Yugo and put a Buick nameplate on it and sell it to the
Chinese, that is their business, and it will hurt their business. The
universities have a lot tied up in the value of their name, and I
think that will at least assure that good mathematics is taught by
those good universities that establish branches in China.
But the question is, what is the effect of this relationship on free
speech there and free speech here? As to free speech there, I think
that American campuses in China are
doing a better job of hon-
oring American values of free speech than any other campus in
China. So our presence there does raise the standard, to some de-
gree.
Even better, from a free-speech standpoint, is when Chinese stu-
dents come here. I guarantee that every Chinese student that
comes here will have a chance, often, to see the cooking pots of the
Communist Party of China smashed. It will be a good experience
for them.
But, as to those who are taught there, we would want to have
the highest
standard of free speech, the highest standard of polit-
ical inquiry and tough Socratic questions. My guess is that we will
not be able to reach American standards.
I am also concerned about the effect this all has on free speech
here. For example, AMC—I believe it is the second-largest owner
of movie screens in the United States—is now Chinese-owned. Is
Richard Gere going to be in a movie about Tibet that is made in
the future by some studio that feels that being on movie screens
in the United States is not relevant to the success of the movie?
I don’t know. But we do know that such a movie will not be on Chi-
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6
nese screens and may have difficulty being on Chinese-owned
screens here in the United States.
More attuned to academia, I have seen Turkey try to buy chairs
of genocide denial
by endowing chairs of history, and I would be
concerned about China endowing chairs at our university.
They have a program worldwide of teaching Confucianism. I
think China should be very proud of Confucian philosophy and
what it has added to the world. The world could learn more about
Confucianism. But I have fear that, if it is up to the Chinese Gov-
ernment, the version that you will learn will involve not breaking
the cooking pots of the Chinese Communist Party.
We do have to worry about the influence of money. Universities
are not exempt from this, and there is a ton of money. We already
see the enormous political power China gets from our corporations.
The easiest way to make money is to make something for pennies
in China and sell it for dollars in the United States. A lot of people
are
in that business, and they are a powerful force here in Wash-
ington and in the general political circles. And, of course, the
money that our universities make on the Chinese enterprise,
whether it be campuses there or students coming here, may very
well affect what is taught, what stances are taken, who does the
teaching.
So, in conclusion, I think that having our campuses there helps
free speech in China—though it doesn’t help it as much as if we
were able to obtain the levels of purity
and free discourse that I
would like to see—but we can do better. And a hearing like this
will push people like you to move in the right direction.
I yield back.
Mr. S
MITH
. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Rohrabacher?
Mr. R
OHRABACHER
. Well, first and foremost, I would like to
thank our witnesses for coming today, and I would like to thank
the chairman.
Chairman Smith has been a stalwart example of what I think
Americanism is supposed to be all about. We are supposed to stand
for other things rather than simply corporate profit and making
money. I am not against making money, and I am for lower taxes,
but that is not what our
Founding Fathers had in mind, just a
place where selfish people could come and make a load of money
and not care about any other values.
No, instead, it is very clear that our Founding Fathers believed
that there are certain rights that are granted by God to people ev-
erywhere, every individual has rights that are granted by God, and
that as Americans we should lead the way and hold out basic val-
ues so that the world—we don’t have to go to war with everybody,
but at the very least we should be an example to the world and
an inspiration to people of China and everywhere that would like
to have their freedom, as well.
I think the moment of truth, Mr.
Chairman, came—and it was
very sad; we were defining ourselves—in 1989 when the Chinese
military poured into Tiananmen Square and slaughtered the de-
mocracy movement.
Let me just note that when I was working with Ronald Reagan
in the White House for 7 years we prided ourselves that we
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