WHAT HE SAID

House Leader Slams China, Urges U.S.-Taiwan Pact (Doug Palmer, June 2, 2003, Reuters)

U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay harshly criticized China's leaders on Monday in a speech calling for a U.S. free trade agreement with Taiwan.

The Texas Republican said Beijing should give up its goal of regaining control over Taiwan because the United States would not allow "a thriving economy to be swallowed up by a dictatorship."

"The PRC (People's Republic of China), in my opinion, is a backward, corrupt anachronism, run by decrepit tyrants ... clinging to a dying regime," DeLay said in a speech at the American Enterprise Institute.

"The notion that these oppressive and dangerous men could convince the United States that their murderous ideology should be imposed on a free and independent Taiwan is absurd," he said.

DeLay said he was trying to persuade the Bush administration to begin free trade talks with Taiwan, which China regards as a renegade province. He said the House of Representatives could "at the right time" vote on a resolution calling for negotiations to begin.

This is a shamefully unfinished bit of business, left over from the Cold War. China, a terror regime in possession of WMD, should have been atop the original Axis of Evil and it should be US policy to change the regime and deprive it, and its successors, of missiles and nukes. In the meantime, our Taiwanese allies--and Britain, Israel, India, etc.--should indeed be incorporated into the ad hoc free trade coalition that began with NAFTA but has spread to include places like Chile and soon Australia. Posted by Orrin Judd at June 3, 2003 08:07 AM