By Douglas Montero. New York Post, May 23, 2000
SHENJDE LIAN spent two years in a Chinese prison.
He endured blistering interrogations - 120 of them.
He was denied food if he didn't rat on his pro-democracy friends.
And he lived with the fear that "if I didn't cooperate, I will never get out, I will never see my family again."
His crime was simply being one of the leaders of the Tiananmen Square pro-democracy movement that the Chinese communist government snuffed out - with fatal results.
Shenjde rattled off a battery of atrocities committed by the Chinese government: Political and religious leaders are jailed without trials. Some have "disappeared." Forced abortions. Grisly "organ snatching" from the bodies of prisoners in labor camps.
The violations are much the same as the atrocities Cuban-Americans in Miami and Union City charge Fidel Castro with.
Shenjde, 31, naturally opposes the much-debated free-trade agreement with China. But he also opposes the hypocrisy he sees in U.S. foreign policy - from those who want to trade with China yet ironically favor the strangling, and ineffective, embargo on Cuba.
"It's very absurd when you compare the two situations," said Shenjde, executive director of the Free China Movement in Washington, D.C.
"They say the U.S. government is standing firm against the dictatorship in Cuba, but Republicans are silent when they talk about free trade with China, a country that has a worse tyranny than Cuba."
But there's a big difference between China and Cuba.
Perhaps Shenjde's hatred for China is blinding him from the economic windfall - $14 billion a year - the U.S. can earn trading with Cuba. And the jobs it will create.
Damian Fernandez, chairman of the International Relations Department at Florida International University, said everyone knows the driving force behind free trade with China is money - which Cuba has little of.
"It's clearly a double standard," Fernandez said. "China is not Cuba. China is bigger in the grand scheme of things and the China lobby isn't as strong as the Cuban lobby ... And there is no U.S. imperialistic past between our government and China."
George W. Bush and House Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-Texas) both support free trade and the Cuban embargo. They argue that China is different because it has loosened its economic grip on business, and entrepreneurs - not the government - will reap the benefits of free trade.
"All commerce in Cuba is controlled by and ultimately benefits Fidel Castro," said Jonathan Baron, DeLay's spokesman.
During a recent campaign speech supporting free trade, candidate Bush said: "Economic freedom creates habits of liberty. And habits of liberty create expectations of democracy."
And more important, Bush said, "China is most free where it is most in contact with the world economy."
Well said.
Rep. Jose Serrano (D-Bronx) is no hypocrite. He plans to break ranks with other anti-free trade Democrats and vote in favor of the China bill because he hopes one day Republicans will heed the words of their candidate Bush when its comes to Cuba.
"There is no rational way to explain why you trade with China and not Cuba," Serrano said. "If you try to explain it, you must cross your fingers behind your back or wink at everybody you're talking to because no one will believe you."
Equally well said. |