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IN MEMORIAM: On April 25, 2009, in London, Falun Gong practitioners march carrying pictures of practitioners killed by the Chinese regime. On April 25, 1999, then-paramount leader Jiang Zemin penned a letter justifying the persecution he would order three months later. (The Epoch Times)
Two decades ago, the communist empire collapsed in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. In the past few months, two dictatorships have been overthrown in the Middle East, and several others appear to be tottering.
In this worldwide movement toward freedom, the Chinese regime, at once both the largest communist state on the planet and the most brutal dictatorship, has been an extraordinary exception.
Not only did the Chinese regime survive the 1989 democracy movement, but it has so thrived that many Western countries today equally fear its rise as much as its collapse.
A short-sighted U.S. policy that has known neither how to contain the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) regime nor how to cooperate with it has played a major role in helping this beast to grow.
Recognizing Communist China
President Richard Nixon abandoned U.S. principles for the sake of pragmatic diplomacy, and the United States offered friendship to a brutal communist regime.
Nixon rationalized establishing formal diplomatic relations with communist China out of fear of the consequences of a possible miscommunication in the nuclear age. But he also seemed to believe that U.S. engagement with the Chinese regime could change its behavior in positive ways. For instance, Nixon believed that had the United States normalized relations sooner, Chinese involvement in the Korea War could have been avoided.
Of course, Nixon also wanted China to be a potential U.S. ally in the Cold War with the Soviet Union.
At that time, the Chinese regime was having an ideological argument with its former master, mostly because Mao was mad at the criticism of Stalin by the new generation of leaders of the Soviet Union. In addition, China shared a long border and long-standing territorial disagreements with the Soviet Union. The Chinese regime was more suspicious of the Soviets and more afraid of invasion by them than by the Americans.
When you choose a murderer, a rapist, and a thief to be your business partner, you will end up being an accomplice in crime, a victim of the criminal, or, very often, both.
Diplomatic relations with the United States were a great gift to the Chinese communist regime. The United States confirmed the Chinese leadership’s belief that opposing the United States militarily was the way to win its respect; possessing nuclear weapons had strengthened the Chinese regime’s leverage in diplomacy.
Domestically, diplomatic relations with the United States declared to the Chinese people that the Western countries accepted the communist system, which helped legitimize the regime.
The enthusiasm and admiration Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon expressed for Mao as a great leader of China still sickens me. Mao’s revolution and dictatorship caused 80 million unnatural deaths of the Chinese people.
Tolerating the Tiananmen Massacre
After the death of Mao and other founding members of communist China, the Chinese people for the first time overcame a deep-seated fear and in the spring of 1989, took to Tiananmen Square, demanding democracy and transparency of the regime.
Deng Xiaoping, the paramount leader of the CCP, together with seven other veteran communist leaders, sent tanks and machine guns to the square and killed thousands of the students.
Deng said at that time that he would kill 200,000 Chinese people to maintain the power of the Communist Party for 20 years.
At the beginning, the United States offered moral support to the demonstrating students and later gave asylum to some of the dissidents and imposed some economic sanctions against China.
When the United States saw the communist regime had won the battle, it quietly lifted all the suspended exchanges and sanctions without the Chinese regime making any concession to reforming its political system or acknowledging its wrongdoing in killing the demonstrators.The lives of those students and of the millions of Chinese who have sacrificed their lives pursuing freedom were quickly forgotten. Before the eyes of the Chinese people, the United States once again became a friend with the murderous regime.
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