Reports that the trade-at-any-price business lobby is going to succeed in bulldozing China's permanent trade status through Congress may have been exaggerated. For one thing, China's own behavior is simply too egregious to hide under the business roundtable. In addition to threatening war with Taiwan every few days, the Beijing regime is so paranoid that it recently jailed a woman in the restive province of Eastern Turkestan for the "crime" of mailing newspaper clippings to her husband in America (i.e., "revealing state secrets").
Last week, the Congressional Policy Advisory Board, a group that meets under the auspices of the House Republican Policy Committee, concluded that China's threats to Taiwan "have created a serious threat to peace and security in East Asia." In addition to criticizing the Clinton administration's "inadequate, confusing, and in some instances counterproductive" responses, the board recommended "prompt Senate approval of the Taiwan Security Enhancement Act" so that U.S. policy would be "unambiguous."
What is remarkable about this recommendation is that it comes from a mainstream group of Republican wise men, such as American Enterprise Institute president Christopher DeMuth; Heritage Foundation president Edwin Feulner; former U.N. ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick; Peter Rodman, a national security aide under President Bush; and former secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld.
Meanwhile, in a speech to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, House majority whip Tom DeLay described China as the "leading national security issue of our time" and drew an analogy between appeasing the Chinese over Taiwan and appeasing the Nazis at Munich. Further, he argued for an end to the "diplomatic fiction" of the long-time "one China" policy and support for democratic Taiwan. And DeLay -- often skeptical of increased defense spending -- recognized that American defense posture in the region should be heightened.
At a time when most in Congress, under extraordinary pressure from big business to turn a blind eye to Beijing's threats to the peace, are failing to speak up on China policy, the Advisory Board and DeLay set a standard that others on Capitol Hill might profitably imitate. The Senate, in particular, should move promptly to follow the House in passing the Taiwan Security Enhancement Act. Whatever then happens with permanent normal trade relations for Beijing, an important congressional message will have been sent: America will not sacrifice international security to commercial interests.