Carter’s Tragic Legacy

John Suarez, June 4, 2002

President Carter normalized relations between Washington and Beijing in  1979. The conventional belief then with regards to the Soviet Union and  China, as with Cuba now, was that normal relations would lead to a greater  opening for human rights and a peaceful transition to democracy. The  opposite has been the case. In the Soviet Union confrontation and economic  isolation led to a peaceful implosion of the regime. In China the policy of  trade and political engagement has led to a thriving economic system under  Communist party control and modernization and expansion of both the military  and police state to continue repressing the Chinese people.

Ronald Reagan defined the Soviet Union as the “focus of evil in the modern  world” and engaged in a combined policy of military confrontation and  economic isolation denounced at the time by academics, journalists and  future policy makers as delusional. For example, Clinton’s future Deputy  Secretary of State, Strobe Talbott then a Time reporter counseled Reagan to,  “adopt a realistic trade policy.” According to Talbott, “though Reagan has  learned not to say so out loud, associates say he still believes that the  U.S.S.R. could be badly damaged, and forced to cut back on its military  buildup, if the West cut it off from trade contacts. That is a delusion.”  Ronald Reagan did not follow Mr. Talbott’s advice and less than eight years  later the USSR peacefully imploded. Freedom was brought to the former Soviet  Union and liberation to the captive nations of the Warsaw Pact.  Unfortunately, Reagan followed the conventional wisdom in China.

The events of June 1989 when thousands of students were butchered by Chinese  troops for peacefully demonstrating for democracy, human rights, and an end  to government corruption dramatically revealed the failure of the policy of  engagement. Surprisingly, economic engagement with the butchers of Beijing  was not even suspended but intensified. Twelve years have passed since the  Tiananmen Square massacre but according to Amnesty International, “China  continues its systemic suppression of dissent, which includes arbitrary  arrests, torture, unfair trials, religious repression, and executions.”

Amnesty International described the price Chinese citizens are paying, one  of them Zhou Jianxiong. Zhou, an agricultural worker, was tortured to death  by officials from the township birth control office to make him reveal the  whereabouts of his wife, suspected of being pregnant without permission. He  was hung upside down, repeatedly whipped and beaten with wooden clubs,  burned with cigarette butts, branded with soldering irons, and had his  genitals ripped off.

The result of engagement with China has not been the transformation of the  Chinese dictatorship to democracy. Amnesty International’s 2001report states  that, “thousands of people were arbitrarily detained for peacefully  exercising their rights to freedom of expression, association or religion.  Some were sentenced to long prison terms after unfair trials under national  security legislation; others were detained without trial and assigned to up  to three years' 're-education through labor'. Torture and ill treatment of  prisoners continued to be widespread. The limited and incomplete records  available showed that at least 1,511 people were sentenced to death and  1,000 executed; the true figures were believed to be far higher.”

Nevertheless former President Carter argues that, “the best way to keep  China increasingly open to worship—and trade, commerce, and political  change—is by them being in relationship with the outside world,” advocating  the same for the Castro dictatorship, “we shouldn't isolate Cuba but allow  free trade, commerce, and visitation back and forth. That's the best way to  break down totalitarianism.” When Carter advocates for “free trade” and  “commerce,” he’s actually advocating for taxpayer-subsidized trade.

Congressman Ron Paul describes how US taxpayers subsidize the Chinese  dictatorship, “China, for instance, receives the largest amount of money  from the Export-Import Bank. Outstanding liabilities for the Export-Import  Bank are now $55 billion. There is $5.9 billion that has been granted to the  Chinese.” According to Congressman Paul, China has used Export-Import funds  to build nuclear power plants, expand its state-run airline, and even build  steel factories that compete directly with our own struggling domestic steel  industry. These areas of the economy subsidized by the US taxpayer are also  elements being used for the modernization of the Chinese military and  maintaining the apparatus of repression. Castro is broke. Subsidized trade  is what the majority of the anti-embargo lobby is after.

President Bush spoke the truth when he argued for maintaining sanctions on  the Cuban dictatorship, “I know what trade means with a tyrant. It means  that we will underwrite tyranny, and we cannot let that happen.” We’ve been  doing that since 1979 in China and have the blood of thousands of Chinese  citizens on our hands. We should not trade with tyrants in Havana or with  tyrants in Beijing, because in doing so we become co-conspirators in a crime  against humanity, and subsidize those who would do us harm.

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