No tyrants allowed

...Instead of denouncing the systematic repression of Christians and other religious people, we pretend it does not exist...

...Linkage also means denying China access to our scientific and manufacturing innovations...

...So long as China remains a ruthless Communist dictatorship, whatever the mercantile energies of the oppressive gerontarchs in Beijing and their billion worker bees, the inevitability of conflict must inform all our thinking and planning...

...One model is the Jackson-Vanik amendment, which denied most-favored-nation status to the Soviet Union so long as the Kremlin refused to grant freedom of movement to Soviet Jews...

...We do not want to enrich the men who launched cruise missiles to intimidate their brethren on Taiwan on the occasion of the first free election of a Chinese leader in some 5,000 years...

...We must return to the practice of linkage: Western largesse to China must be tied to increased freedom for the Chinese people...

...For China is the last of the great dictatorships of this century of wicked dictators, and if we fail in this final challenge it will call into question our previous triumphs...

...Yet we did not learn this most fundamental lesson about our international destiny, and after each triumph we weakened ourselves and armed our future enemies, believing that peace is the normal condition of mankind...

...Michael Ledeen holds the Freedom Chair at the American Enterprise Institute...

...Instead of condemning Chinese infanticide—practiced primarily against baby girls—we send Hillary Clinton to Beijing to celebrate the liberation of women...

...Instead of insisting on greater freedom for the peoples of China, we speak of the wealth to be derived from joining in the exploitation of Chinese workers...

...our enemies sought us out, knowing that they would have to face us sooner or later...

...The history of this century is replete with sudden attacks by tyrants against us and our friends, dragging America into unwanted wars, first against expansionist Germany under the Kaiser, then against the Axis and the Soviet Empire, and more recently into the Persian Gulf...

...It will be objected that these policies are unduly confrontational and that they will so antagonize the Chinese that greater freedom will become less likely, and conflict more probable...

...We paid a great price for our illusion about the Soviet Union when, on the heels of the sudden expansion of Soviet military power into Afghanistan, the Horn of Africa, and Central America, we were forced to spend our wealth on a massive military program...

...Ronald Reagan was accused of irresponsible lunacy for speaking the simple truth about the evils of the Soviet Empire, and today our leaders are largely silent about the evils of Chinese oppression...

...We stand for an idea— the advance of freedom—that drives the tyrants to attack us, however fervently we may wish it were otherwise...

...In like manner, American companies must be prevented from trading with Chinese corporations that are little more than extensions of the military complex...

...The policies that brought about the fall of Soviet communism are the same that should be directed against the evil Chinese Empire today: Speak the truth about it, challenge the tyrants to grant greater freedom to their people, and ensure that our military superiority is so great that they dare not challenge us, even when the very survival of their regime is at stake...

...Moreover, the American people will not indefinitely support the embrace of tyranny...

...Our historic mission and simple prudence dictate a strategy to keep China militarily weak and to challenge the hegemony of her tyrants...

...This naive self-deception underlies the folly of our China policy...

...The response is simple: Greater freedom is the greatest guarantee of peace, and the failure to challenge tyranny only encourages its malevolent expansion...

...Our university and industrial laboratories are flooded with Chinese "students," many of them funded by the warlords who depend upon these agents to provide Beijing with our latest discoveries...

...Other nations may design their policies solely on the basis of realpolitik and the balance of power, but America is not a traditional nation...

...The advocates of this policy warned against an aggressive challenge to Soviet communism, even in word, and our leaders and diplomats devoted great care to Soviet sensibilities, just as today they warn against actions, and even language, that might annoy the Chinese...

...To continue to appease Chinese communism is to betray the democratic revolution that has swept much of the world for the past quarter-century, to ensure the ultimate rejection of our policies by our own people, and to risk placing ourselves once again in danger...

...And instead of ensuring that advanced weapons and lethal technologies are kept out of the hands of the vast armed forces of the People's Republic, we have abolished the export controls that doomed Moscow's Red Army and the armed forces of the satellites to a state of inferiority compared with the modern armies of the West...

...Now, Western armies are smaller and weaker with each passing year, while the Chinese and their rogue allies, from Iran and Iraq to Libya and North Korea, steadily amass greater power...

...Alas, we are doing the opposite...

...We did not seek these conflicts...

...Public opinion has repeatedly turned against alliances with the friendliest of dictators, such as the shah of Iran and Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines, and they were more important to our global strategy than China is now...

...Because of Jackson-Vanik, China's most-favored-nation status must be renewed by vote every year...

...We should have learned—from the war against fascism and then the long cold war against Soviet com-munism—that our struggle against tyranny is inescapable, because our very existence threatens its legitimacy...

...The coherent pursuit of our ideals is the best way to enhance our national security and the only guarantee of the public support necessary to sustain our policies...

...If we practice detente with the Chinese, we risk similar costs, perhaps including the blood of our soldiers...

...Student visas should be slashed, and those who are admitted should be denied access to sensitive research facilities where our future military power is being developed...

...Instead, we and our allies pretend that we can tame China by enriching her, thereby repeating the costly error of detente, when we dreamed of taming the Soviet Union by luring her into an intricate web of commercial relations that would eventually sap the Communists' revolutionary zeal and convert them to peaceful trading partners in a stable bipolar world...

...If the nation can be awakened to the injustices in China and the threat posed by China, perhaps the denial of MFN status can once again become a useful political tool...