Activist Claims Pelosi, Concerned With Partisan Politics, Ignores China Issue
by Chad Groening
January 10, 2007
(AgapePress) - - An activist dedicated to a free mainland China says he is disappointed that new Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, who has been boldly and vociferously anti-communist in the past, has not put confronting the Communist Chinese threat on the 110th Congress's agenda. D.J. McGuire is president of the U.S.-based China e-Lobby, a group dedicated to "exposing the abuses of human rights, threats to the security of the free world, and attacks on general decency committed by Communist China." His organization also works to influence policy throughout the free world in the effort to ensure that these abuses and attacks by the Chinese government do not go unopposed.
McGuire says House Speaker Pelosi has had a strong record in opposing the Communist Chinese regime, having even made a personal trip to Beijing to protest the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. The California congresswoman also opposed giving China permanent normal trade relations (PNTR) status, he notes; but so far, the China issue does not appear to be on Pelosi's agenda.
The human rights activist believes the new Speaker of the House has more of an interest in keeping the Democratic Party together than bringing to light what he describes as China's "very great threat" to the United States. "What we're finding is that she decided to be a Democrat first and an anti-Communist second," he says.
"It is unfortunate," but the fact that Pelosi has not made any move to confront the problem of Communist China since becoming House Speaker suggests "that this is not a priority for her," McGuire asserts. "And that's really a problem," he adds.
Still, the China e-Lobby spokesman says he hopes the China issue is one that will eventually be taken up by the new Congress and that Pelosi will push for a much stronger U.S. policy toward the Beijing regime than is currently in effect. For the moment, however, the new House Speaker appears to be "more interested in protecting and expanding the Democratic House majority than [in doing] anything in particular on this issue," he asserts.
America's policy with regard to China is an issue that "sort of creates splits within both the Democratic and Republican Parties," McGuire acknowledges. And Pelosi "seems more interested in being a partisan leader than she is in being a national leader at this point," he says. "That would be my interpretation of what we are seeing."
John Patrick, an advocate for democracy in China, has called attention to the fact that, since the November 2006 election, Pelosi has twice voted in favor of measures to grant permanent normal trade relations status to Vietnam (H.R. 5602 and H.R. 6406). She even voted against her own party in order to favor H.R. 6406, he notes.
Patrick says PNTR status to Vietnam should be opposed for the same reasons normalizing trade relations with China should be opposed. Granting normal trade relations status to either of those Communist regimes, he contends, would involve the same economic, human rights, and national security pitfalls.
Chad Groening, a regular contributor to AgapePress, is a reporter for American Family Radio News, which can be heard online.
