IBDeditorials.com: Editorials, Political Cartoons, and Polls from Investor's Business Daily -- The Chinese Re-Connection
The Clinton's will go down in history as the couple who destroyed America.
National Security: Bill Clinton was the best president the People's Republic of China ever had. His wife may be even better. Beijing, hungry for more technology transfers, is betting on it.
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IBD Series: To China With Love: The Clinton Legacy
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It's no coincidence that Sen. Hillary Clinton's autobiography, "Living History," is the most popular foreign political memoir in Chinese history. The state-owned publisher of the Chinese translation of her book has printed hundreds of thousands of copies (after censoring passing references to dissident Harry Wu) and stocked them in bookstore windows from Beijing to Shanghai.
It's also no coincidence that Chinese bagmen are lining up immigrants in Chinatowns from New York to San Francisco to donate cash to Hillary's campaign. Many have never voted. Some aren't citizens and couldn't vote if they wanted to. Most are dishwashers, waiters and garment workers who don't even have the means to give the thousands they're giving. And an alarming number say they've been pressured by shady Chinese "businessmen" to help fill Hillary's campaign war chest.
Command fundraisers are breaking out all over the Chinese community. It's plain that Sen. Clinton is China's candidate. It's time to ask why that is. What is the attraction? What does Beijing want? What has she promised?
Is Hillary, as some suspect, a Manchurian candidate loyal to foreign and unseen donors rather than American voters? Can she be trusted with U.S. security?
With polls showing Clinton bounding ahead of the Democratic field, while nosing out even top GOP hopefuls for the White House, voters must take these questions seriously. We plan to drill down on them in a series of editorials.
It's instructive to revisit the special relationship the Chinese had with the last Clinton administration, especially in view of how the former president plans to act as an "international emissary" for his wife.
Bill Clinton called it a "strategic partnership." He argued that cozying up to or as he called it, "engaging" the communist Chinese was in America's best interest. But while Clinton was engaging them, an engagement that included inviting them into our defense labs and dismantling export controls, Beijing:
Managed to steal secrets to every nuclear warhead deployed in the U.S. arsenal.
Deployed for the first time an entire force of CSS-4 ICBMs that target the continental U.S., from L.A. to New York and everything in between.
Declared the U.S. enemy No. 1 in its military writings.
Bought Russian destroyers armed with missiles designed to kill U.S. carriers.
Built up its missile batteries across the Taiwan Strait.
Infiltrated the CIA and FBI with spies.
The Chinese espionage that occurred on Clinton's watch was unprecedented, and analysts still don't know how deep Chinese moles penetrated our security complex.
The FBI warned President Clinton that the People's Republic of China was running a massive intelligence operation against the U.S. government, which included a plan to influence the 1996 election.
Clinton looked the other way. In fact, there's evidence he facilitated it by throttling the prosecution of Chinese spy cases and covering up probes into Chinese funny money that poured into his campaign.
As soon as Clinton took office, he implemented a policy of "denuclearization." That included ending nuclear testing, kicking open the defense labs to Chinese and other foreign scientists, and declassifying hundreds of documents related to our nuclear program.
Clinton also deregulated export of sensitive dual-use technology such as supercomputers and rocket guidance systems. And Beijing gleefully took advantage of the dovish changes, sharpening the reliability of the missiles it has aimed at the U.S. and Taiwan.
Clinton's open-door "engagement policy" amounted to rank appeasement of a communist state with hegemonic military ambitions. Will Hillary carry on the tradition? Will she, too, hold a high-tech fire sale for the Chinese? One thing is for sure, Beijing and its bagmen are betting on
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