The Chinese Connection

by Eleanor Schlafly

A three paragraph obituary notice appeared in the March 13 issue of the New York Times noting the death of Archbishop Phillip Yang Libo of Gansu Province in northwest China. He was "secretly ordained in 1981 and repeatedly imprisoned between 1952 and 1992," said the Times, but "no age or cause of death was given." Briefly added, the Archbishop was an "underground Chinese Catholic leader."

One day before—March 12—the Times enthusiastically announced, in page one headlines, that President Clinton had decided to move up a trip to Beijing from November to late June, "the first visit of an American President to China since the massacre of unarmed civilians near Tiananmen Square in 1989" but not "near the June 4 anniversary of the Tiananmen violence." Enthusiastic "Chinese diplomats clearly hope that a visit by Mr. Clinton will put the memory of Tiananmen Square behind them and cement a more cooperative relationship." All the preceding quotes from the Times.

"Here at home," observes the Weekly Standard publication, "journalists and foreign-policy sages see the Clinton administration's policy of 'engagement' as a sophisticated strategy for gradually 'integrating' China into the international system, shrewdly accommodating its rise to great-power status.. .But for the Chinese, 'engagement' is a giant pinata: They keep whacking away, and the prizes keep falling out." The continued jailing and persecution of underground Catholic bishops and clergy by the Chinese Communists seems to reward them with lucrative business deals and most-favored nation trade status. Slaughtering young students begging for freedom and democracy made no change at the White House last March: The U.S. will no longer support U.N. human-rights resolutions at Geneva.

Beijing, in fact, can get away with anything and incur no official U.S. wrath. On January 12, for example, as the President was certifying to Congress that China was in full compliance with weapons non-proliferation, U.S. intelligence agencies were eavesdropping on Chinese and Iranian officials busily arranging secret sale of hundreds of tons of chemicals to be used by Saddam Hussein to enrich uranium for use in nuclear warheads. Likewise, in February, undercover Federal authorities in New York City arrested Chinese Communist agents attempting to sell kidneys and other organs removed from executed prisoners on the mainland to wealthy Americans for transplants. ABC News's Prime Time Live in fact—on March 13, the day Archbishop Phillip Yang Libo's tiny obit appeared in the Times—was named recipient of a Polk Award, one of the highest prizes in American journalism, for its special Blood Money an "expose on black-market trafficking in body parts from Chinese prisoners," to quote the Times.

What has been the customary reaction to such revelations of Chinese Communist complicity in these and other examples of criminal deceit? Official silence, as if there is no connection between the actions of Beijing and how the U.S. should respond as a free world leader. Even more dismaying has been public apathy to evidence that the Chinese Communists have boldly attempted to influence the U.S. political process and, with help from high American officials, acquired the transfer of weapons technology sought by the Chinese military. Here are some of the details:

Red China and U.S. Elections

When it was first reported many months ago that Communist China had attempted—and perhaps succeeded—in influencing the 1996 elections, the news was greeted with expected hesitation and doubt. In February, however, the Senate Government Affairs Committee released a mountainous 1,500 page report on election campaign abuse which contained a 20-page chapter entitled The China Connection: Summary of the Committee's Findings Relating to Efforts of the People's Republic of China to Influence U.S. Policies and Elections. In normal times, the New York Times editorialized on Feb. 12, "both outrage and curiosity would greet" this report, "but these are not normal times; the public is suffering from scandal overload," in particular sexual allegations against the President. Nonetheless, the Times goes on: "Some findings are beyond partisan dispute. Both F.B.I. and the C.I.A. have information that is too sensitive for public release. Moreover, an important Democrat, Senator Joseph Lieberman, told The Times that this secret information showed that China's President, Jiang Zemin, 'gave overarching approval' to a plan to lobby Congress."

Specifically, the prime criticism of the Senate Committee's 20-page chapter on the Chinese connection is not what it reveals, but what it does not. This is spelled out on page 3 as follows: "Owing to the sensitivity of the subject, the Committee has been unable to share with the American people most of the documentary or testimonial evidence. . . nor can it do so now. Moreover, the Committee will be unable to address the subject matter publicly much beyond the precise wording of the discussion that follows. However, a long, more detailed, and classified account of the Committee's findings have been prepared and will be maintained in secure environs." Be that as it may, this heavily self-censored Senate reports contains some intriguing revelations, as follows:

Fund-Raisers & PRC Agents

The Senate Committee report details, briefly, the activities of a number of individuals noted with "close ties to the PRC" who "interacted with one-another with some frequency" in the Beijing-directed scheme. Included were Ted Sioeng, Maria Hsia, John Huang, James and Mochtar Riady, who control the multibillion dollar Lippo Group financial conglomerate in Indonesia with close business ties to the Chinese Communist government, and Yah Lin "Charlie" Trie, former Little Rock, Ark. restaurateur and friend and fund-raiser of President Clinton.

Most of these names are relatively familiar to anyone who has followed the news about campaign fund-raising irregularities. Maria Hsia (pronounced Shaw) has been indicted for allegedly funneling illegal political contributions from Buddhist nuns and monks at Hsi Lai Temple. John Huang—who has invoked Fifth Amendment rights not to answer questions about the possibility of Chinese Government spying or political meddling through his former Lippo Group employers, James and Mochtar Riady—moved from a job in the late Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown's department to White House super fund-raiser. "He went on to harvest huge sums of illegal contributions," notes the New York Times (2/15/98), "helping produce the biggest political fund-raising scandals in a generation."

Of several activities the Senate report found that China undertook to influence the U.S. political processes during the 1996 election cycle, one of the most intriguing listed was this: "A PRC government official devised a seeding strategy, under which PRC officials would organize Chinese communities in the U.S. to encourage them to promote persons from their communities to run in certain state and local elections. The intent behind the seeding program was to develop viable candidates sympathetic to the PRC for future federal elections."

Finally, as solicitor of large amounts of foreign campaign donations, was Yah Lin "Charlie" Trie, formerly of Little Rock. The Mindszenty Report of January 1998 noted "Charlie" Trie was the personal escort of Wang Jun, head of Beijing's principal arms trading company, Polytechnologies, to a Feb. 6, 1996 coffee with President Clinton—and later the same day another meeting with Commerce Secretary Ron Brown—before skipping the country to avoid testifying in the current fund-raising scandals. Recently indicted and arrested upon returning to the U.S. from Macao, the Wall Street Journal (3/6/98) reveals that his patron in that soon-to-be-returned-to-Beijing Portuguese colony was Ng Lap Seng, owner of Fortuna's Palace, a nightclub specializing in gambling and prostitution, well-known as a meeting place for both Chinese drug-running "triad gangs" and high-ranking officers of the Communist People's Liberation Army. Last February, in addition, Beijing honored Ng Lap Seng—who once tried to purchase "Charlie" Trie's down-and-out Camelot Hotel in Little Rock—to the Chinese People's Consultative Conference, a business-advisory commission.

All and all, the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee's report on the "Chinese Connection," concluded, "that the government of China may have allocated millions of dollars in 1996 alone to achieve its objectives." But that was not all, the New York Times—months later—revealed how non-Beijing political fund-contributors helped the Chinese Communists acquire priceless U.S. military technology with no effort on their part whatsoever.

Missiles to Jiang

A. M. Rosenthal, former editor and now columnist for the New York Times, provides the sequence of new stories which have uncovered how U.S. missile technology has been handed to Communist China's President Jiang Zemin in advance of the first Sino-American summit in Beijing since 1985. From his column "The Missile Business" (4/10/98):

An answer to Rosenthal's question came on April 13 when Times reporter Jeff Gerth (who wrote the first Whitewater scandal story in 1992) revealed that Loral and Hughes had not only contributed $2.5 million to the President's political party in 1997, but Loral Chairman Bernard L. Schwartz was also the largest personal donor to the Presidential campaign. The Wall Street Journal (4/27/98) added a note of interest, revealing that billionaire money manager George Soros would soon be brought in as a new Loral partner. Soros, who has given some $1.5 billion to causes in a number of former Communist nations also donated $15 million to groups promoting the legalization of marijuana and other drugs in the 1997 elections.

Human & Religious Rights Denied

While U.S. Big Business is eagerly investing millions of dollars in so-called joint commercial ventures with Beijing and the Chinese Red Army, thousands of students, labor leaders and Catholic bishops and priests are serving prison terms for speaking out for human and religious rights. Largely forgotten by the outside world, in fact, are hundreds of students arrested shortly after the Tiananmen Square massacre. One of them, 29-year-old Wang Dan, was released and sent into forced exile in the U.S. recently to "score points with Washington" notes the New York Times (4/20/98) preceding President Clinton's June 1998 trip to China. Another pro-democracy leader, Wei Jingsheng the former Beijing Zoo electrician, was likewise released in November 1997 two weeks after Beijing's President Jiang Zemin's visit to the United States. The Chinese Communists, says the Times, "seem to be gambling that prominent opponents will have less impact as exiles than as famous prisoners."

Among those languishing in Communist China's squalid prisons are scores of notable religious leaders such as underground Catholic Bishop Zeng Jingmu. Arrested in 1949 after the Communists came to power, he spent 23 years in various labor camps and jails for refusing to bow to the state-sponsored "Patriotic churches." In 1995 he was arrested and sentenced again for offering "unauthorized" Masses and religious devotions to the Blessed Mother.

Bishop Zeng Jingmu remains in prison today as U.S. President Bill Clinton and Communist leader Jiang Zemin prepare to discuss a "strategic partnership" between the U.S. and Mainland China at their historic June 1998 summit in Beijing. Now is a fitting time for our U.S. Catholic Bishops to speak out for his immediate release and the release of all Catholics and other Christians.

SUGGESTED READING ON POL POT/CAMBODIA—Over 20 years since its publication, John Barren and Anthony Paul's touching Murder of a Gentle Land (Reader's Digest Press) is still a powerful book. With the recent death of Pol Pot, his slaughter of nearly two million Cambodian citizens is an evil that should never be forgotten.

Mindszenty Report, the Cardinal Mindszenty Foundation, P.O. Box 11321, St. Louis, MO 63105, 314-727-6279, published monthly, $20.00 per year.

This item 435 digitally provided courtesy of CatholicCulture.org