Remarks to the Democratic Leadership Council in Hyde Park, New York - Transcript

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, May 29, 2000

Yes, China is still a one-party state, restricting rights of free speech and religious expression, doing things from time to time that frustrate us and even anger us. But by forcing China to slash subsidies and tariffs that protect inefficient industries, which the Communist Party has long used to exercise day-to-day control, by letting our high-tech companies in to bring the Internet and the information revolution to China, we will be unleashing forces that no totalitarian operation rooted in the last century's industrial society can control.

Two years ago there were 2 million Internet users in China; last year there were 9 million; this year there are something over 20 million. At some point there will be over 100 million, and at some point, some threshold that no one can identify with precision will be crossed, and it will be a very different world.

And I think it is worth also pointing out that the more China operates within rule-based systems, with us and with other countries, the more likely they are to see the benefit of the rule of law and the more likely that benefit is to flow down to ordinary people in those 900,000 villages where they're already electing their mayors and in other places. So this is very important.

I think it is quite interesting that the people who hope we will beat this next week in China are the ultraconservatives in the military and the state-owned industries. And quite interesting that people who have been persecuted in China and other places, by and large, want us to adopt this, want us to vote yes on PNTR.

Martin Lee, the head of the democracy movement in Hong Kong, came all the way over here to ask Congress to vote for this. This is a man who cannot, himself, go to China; a man who has never met Zhu Rongji; a man who is still considered persona non grata. But he said to me, he said, "You know, we've got to back the reformers in China. We've got to get them into a system where there is rule of law. We have got to move this way." This is the next big step. "All the human rights activists in America are, I think," he said, "blinded by their opposition to things that have happened in the past and may be happening now, instead of thinking about what is most likely to change China in the future."

The new President of Taiwan supports us letting China into the WTO and America extending PNTR. And yesterday the Dalai Lama, a man who has undergone literally decades of frustration in his dealings with China, strongly endorsed PNTR with China.

So this is a big deal to me, beyond the obvious economic benefits which make it easier for some Members and others to vote for because of the economic makeup of their districts. You have to understand that by far the bigger issue is, what can we do to promote human rights; what can we do to promote the rule of law; what can we do to minimize the chances that there will be another war in Asia in our lifetime or in our children's lifetime? To me, that is what is at issue.

So that's my pitch here. What you're about to do is really important. I've told you the kinds of things that I hope you'll do. But those of you out here listening to me will have a bigger role than me in the next 10 years of America if you just remember what I did with that New Orleans Declaration today and every specific thing that I could cite to you that grew right out of that. It really matters whether you think and whether you put your feelings into organized fashion and whether that then organizes the process for developing specific policies.