Katie Porter: “Mr. Speaker, the resolution that was just rejected--that would have cut off MFN for China--will be interpreted in…”

“Mr. Speaker, the resolution that was just rejected--that would have cut off MFN for China--will be interpreted in Beijing to say that it is OK to threaten free elections in Taiwan; that it is OK to undermine the elected legislature and the free press of Hong Kong; that it is OK for the Chinese to commit cultural genocide in Tibet; that it is OK to sell nuclear armaments to Pakistan; that it is OK to dump products in the United States on our markets that take away the markets from those countries that have been friendly to the United States, like the Philippines and India. The people in Beijing will interpret that it is OK to continue to torture, to continue to crush dissent, to engage in slave labor, to starve orphans, to tell their people how many children they can have. Mr. Speaker, I do not want to cut off MFN because I know that if we can make certain that economic freedom proliferates in China, that ultimately it will in fact lead to political freedom. But, Mr. Speaker, I voted for the Rohrabacher resolution because I did not want to send those messages that Beijing would interpret that way, because it is not OK to do those things because in this world we are our brother's and sister's keepers. The American people value--and the Chinese people must understand this--human rights perhaps above all else, value democracy and human freedom like no other country on Earth.”