Posted on 01/28/2002 3:33:51 AM PST by tberry
U.S. Helps China Destroy Ourselves, Dissident Wu Says
Wes Vernon, NewsMax.com
Monday, Jan. 28, 2002
Editor’s note: This is the conclusion of NewsMax’s exclusive interview with Chinese dissident Harry Wu. See part one: China a Terrorist Threat to U.S., Wu Warns
U.S. cash has directly and indirectly gone into Chinese weapons aimed at the U.S., dissident Harry Wu told NewsMax.com.
As an example, he cited the Chinese purchase of Russian missile destroyers. Russia, which was financially unable to maintain the weaponry, was only too happy to accept the offer of $2 billion for it. Originally designed by the old Soviet Union for the express purpose of using it against U.S. aircraft, the missile destroyers are now the property of the "People’s Liberation Army’s" navy and are facing the U.S. Pacific Fleet.
"Now, the question is why does one former communist country [Russia] not have the cash, and [China] the other communist country [does] have the cash,” Wu says.
Not from their socialist state-owned enterprises, he assured us.
"No, it comes from our trade. From our investment. We are buying the rope.”
The former prisoner of the brutal Red Chinese regime seems to believe his foundation is like a David going up against a Goliath of U.S. and international enterprises that are "funding all these think-tanks and scholars from universities [spreading propaganda] that our business in China is the best way to change China.”
And the slave-made merchandise from China flooding department stores all over America?
That issue hits home with the Laogai Foundation chief. If he were still there doing the slave labor that he used to do, he might very well be making some of those charming bargain items you can pick up at your nearest department store.
"I'd like to say the [U.S.] government doesn’t like to see that happen [and that] it really bothers them.”
Why It's Cheap
But he laments an apparent popular attitude of "Why should I care [if] the product is made by cheap labor, forced labor, by torture. I don’t mind. If the product’s cheap, it’s good for the United States. Right?” Wrong, as Wu sees it.
In many cases, there is the perception that Chinese imports have "no competition in the United States,” thus fostering the notion of "Why should I care?”
Which raises the question of how much of what used to be U.S. competition has now been eliminated by cheap Chinese slave labor that has undercut our own American businesses and the livelihood of American workers.
That supports Wu’s belief that Western nations are shooting themselves in the foot, economically and strategically.
Who benefits from China’s new membership in the World Trade Organization? The multinational corporations, says Wu.
In a speech last May before the U.S.-China Security Review Commission, he warned, "In China, Western companies can take advantage of a cheap, hard-working but oppressed labor force because they do not have to worry about giving workers benefits or dealing with strikes.”
And the following comments of the freedom fighter should be framed for those who wonder why there is so much passivity in official circles when it comes to dealing with China:
"It is actually good for Western business to have a strong Communist Party as a partner in China because the entire government structure operates to serve the party’s interests. So it follows that Western corporations will benefit from allying with the powers-that-be in China.”
Aiding North Korea
Take the "hot spot” of North Korea, a bitter Stalinist regime seething with hatred for the West. While the U.S. supports South Korea, whose approach to governing has given it a thriving, free, capitalist society, China backs North Korea’s dangerous weapons build-up. China is right there supporting this regime that lets its people starve while it puts its resources into developing more weapons of destruction.
"So China’s on the other side over there, and we want to make good relations with them. How come?” the puzzled victim of communist tyranny wants to know.
Wu dishes out a minimum of direct criticism of the U.S. government or its leading politicians, but U.S. government officials have pursued policies he severely criticizes. In fact, one of the dirty little secrets in Washington, as NewsMax has noted before, is that there are so many bipartisan skeletons in the China closet that, with notable exceptions, there is a parallel bipartisan reluctance to shine the spotlight on the dangers and damage that freedom fighters such as Wu have pointed out.
Quite a contrast to the alarm bells in the halls of Congress during the 1950s, when the rallying cry was "Who lost China?”
Nonetheless, NewsMax's interview with the respected dissident served as a reminder of the Clinton administration’s eight long years of total disregard for the security of the United States and the people who entrusted Bill Clinton with the highest office in the land.
U.S. Makes China a Superpower
Wu recalled that one of the last comments of Warren Christopher, Clinton’s first secretary of state, was that "we have to deal with China because China is a superpower.”
"Sir,” Wu asked rhetorically, "now [that] the Soviet Union is gone, how come we have a new superpower? A new superpower? Who made that?”
His answer was that policy-makers did it through a "kowtow” policy toward China. The industrialists, again bidding to supply the rope for their own ultimate demise, finance propaganda saying that "our business in China is the best way to change China. Oh, my God!”
Wu experienced firsthand how technology from the West had advanced Chinese capabilities.
When he re-entered China after attaining U.S. citizenship in the mid-1990s, "from the computer, they were aware” that he was the same Harry Wu they had imprisoned for his defiance of the communist regime from 1960 to 1979.
That was when he was a Chinese national. This time, he had what he may have assumed to be the protection of American citizenship. But they nabbed him in 1995 when he tried to re-enter and threw him back into the Chinese prison system.
Unlike his previous imprisonment, when he was one of millions of Chinese citizens who had been victimized, that citizenship badge was enough to galvanize "my neighbors, my government, my State Department and the Congress” to "make a big noise,” and he was out in 66 days. But anyone who has had that experience knows that’s 66 days too many, he said.
19 Years
His first incarceration lasted 19 years, from 1960 to 1979. He was 23 when he went in, 42 when he was allowed out. Nineteen of his most productive years were wasted, spent doing hard labor in dungeons.
By the time the Chinese government let him out of prison, a new generation (known after 1989 as the Tiananmen Square generation) was coming up. Many of the dissidents of Wu’s generation had "passed away or had not enough energy and were released and given a kind of rehabilitation [and that] would be good for the authorities.” Releasing "old political criminals” was considered good public relations.
"They let some of the fish go back to the pond, stay in the pond. But I, one of the fish, went to the ocean,” and came to the United States, says Wu.
He told his former captors he would go the U.S. just to study. "I had to lie to them,” saying he would come back and resume life as a permanent Chinese citizen. But after all he had been through, there was no way he intended to do that.
Now, Dr. Harry Wu’s life in the United States focuses on an expose of his former tormentor’s designs on our civilization.
The book "Seeds of Fire” is adding ammunition to his efforts to get the truth out to a complacent public and a business community that he believes is intent on supplying the rope for its own hanging.
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