Katie Porter: “I commend him and the gentleman from California for their tremendous leadership in bringing this bill to the floor of…”

“I commend him and the gentleman from California for their tremendous leadership in bringing this bill to the floor of the House of Representatives. Madam Speaker, when we complete this series, we will have passed nine very significant bills designed to effect change in China. While I am biased on this matter, I believe this is the best of the nine, and I believe that because I think it has more potential than any of the others in really providing for change in Chinese society. We know this because of the record of Radio Liberty and Radio Free Europe during the cold war. Madam Speaker, surrogate radios are not propaganda, they are the beaming of truth and ideas and news into censored societies, societies where those ideas from outside are not permitted. And under Radio Free Asia, the concepts of freedom, of democracy, of free enterprise, of the rule of law, of an independent judiciary, the very values that we as Americans believe in so deeply, are reaching their way today into closed societies in Asia. This legislation will cause that to be ramped up 3 times what we are doing today, and will affect not only China, but Burma, Vietnam, Tibet, North Korea, Laos, places where autocratic regimes hold sway.”