Asa Hutchinson: “It has been years since this body voted on the most-favored-nation status for China. It has been 8 years since the…”

“It has been years since this body voted on the most-favored-nation status for China. It has been 8 years since the Tiananmen Square massacre, and it has been 4 years since this Nation embarked on a policy of so-called constructive engagement which delinked our China trade policy from human rights concerns. During these years, years since we last voted on MFN, years since the Tiananmen Square massacre, and the 4 years since we embarked upon constructive engagement, this is what has happened in these years: The struggling democracy movement in China has been thoroughly and completely squashed. Those students at Tiananmen Square, which we watched on television all over this Nation, are all either imprisoned or executed. All voices of freedom in China have since been silenced--all of them--according to the 1996 State Department Report on China. All voices of dissidents have been silenced. Chinese workers have been systematically exploited. Weapons of mass destruction have been exported around the world so that the export of those weapons from China now poses the greatest military risk in the world today. And people of faith in China have been persecuted and driven underground.”