12 October 1997
The Detroit News
Editorial

Trading Freedoms in China

U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Penn., and U.S. Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va., are cosponsoring the Freedom from Religious Persecution Act. It seeks to impose trade sanctions against China to end the persecution of Christians and other religious groups in that country. A U.S. State Department report this summer found that Chinese authorities have intensified their crack-down on the independent Christian house-church movement. The details in the report are decidedly troubling.

But economic sanctions that inhibit the ability of ordinary Chinese to trade with the United States won't advance the cause of religious freedom in China. Congress should instead end aid and other subsidies that for years have been empowering China's oppressive rulers.

All religious groups in China are required by law to register with the Bureau of Religious Affairs - now headed by an atheist hard-liner, Ye Xiaowen. But registration is no mere bureaucratic formality. It invites copious regulations that are impossible to abide by. Most Christian groups therefore, remain underground, congregating in the homes of members instead of churches.

According to the state department review -- prepared at Congress' behest -- Chinese authorities in recent months have closed more than 300 meeting points in Shanghai alone. They have raided the homes of worshipers, disrupting congregations and arresting and beating religious leaders. Nor have non-Christian groups been spared: Tibetan Buddhists are harassed at the smallest pretext. Many Tibetan monks continue to languish in prison with no hope of release.

These abuses are no doubt egregious by U.S. standards. Yet William McGurn -- a Catholic senior editor in the Hong Kong bureau of the Far Eastern Economic Review -- points out that normal trade relations with the West have enhanced religious freedom in China. The mobility of labor that trade has ushered in allows ordinary Chinese to escape Beijing's choke hold on their daily lives. Growing numbers of Chinese, for example, are violating the official one-child policy with the central government helpless to respond.

The Specter-Wolf bill, however, proposes to ban exports of "persecution-facilitating products, goods and services" from China and other repressive countries. Despite the bill's intention, Robert P. O'Quinn of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative Washington, D.C.-based think tank, points out that its language could potentially lead to the banning of virtually any and all exports from a country deemed repressive.

Congress can best promote religious liberty in China by voting to terminate foreign aid -- multilateral and bilateral -- to the country. There is no reason why American taxpayers should subsidize the brutality of tyrants abroad.

Home |  About Us |  Resources |  Press Releases |  Federal Activity & Legislation
State & Local Activity |  NFTC Lawsuit |  Contact Us |  Site Index

.