Sam Gibbons: “we have a lot of work ahead of us as far as bringing the Chinese people and their government into the modern world. A…”

“we have a lot of work ahead of us as far as bringing the Chinese people and their government into the modern world. A lot of mistakes have been made in the past. As I see our mistakes, the biggest mistake we have ever made so far as dealing with China is to disengage from them. And to the extent that the gentleman from California [Mr. Cox] seeks to reengage with them, I support what he is trying to do. I think his time limitation on this makes it a futile effort. The Chinese are far different than we are. They have a far different set of guiding stars on which they guide as far as principles are concerned. We are going to have to help change them and to bring them into a more modern frame of reference. That is going to require quite some effort on the part of the United States. Mr. Cox is aiming in the right direction, but he does not give himself nearly enough time to accomplish what his goal is. First of all, I think every Member of this Congress should visit China as soon as they can and stay as long as they can and try to learn something about the Chinese, not that we want to emulate them, but we ought to know who we are dealing with and the problems that they face in trying to bring themselves into a more modern time. Second, we are going to have to make some sacrifices. We are going to have to do some things, positive things, about engaging the Chinese.”