Is China Friend or Foe?

Communist China's actions in knocking down a U.S. plane, holding its crew as prisoners for 11 days, and refusing to let us fly our plane home, were not the actions of a friendly nation. Just imagine how differently events would have unfolded if our plane had been patrolling the English Channel or the Mediterranean. Our EP-3E plane, clearly marked U.S. Navy, was flying a reconnaissance and surveillance mission in international airspace on a well-known path that we had used for decades. Of course, the Chinese pilot was operating under military instruction to fly as close as he could and harass our plane. The Chinese do not allow hot-shot pilots to make their own decisions about creating an international incident. Bringing down the U.S. plane wasn't any accident.

The video shown by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld proved that this was at least the second incident of close-flying harassment, and this time the Chinese pilot came in close enough to flash his e-mail address to the Americans. Since the U.S. plane was a slow flying propeller plane and the Chinese aircraft was a fast fighter jet, it's clear which plane had the greater speed and maneuverability to avoid a collision.

While our crew was detained in China, Chinese President Jiang Zemin was on a state visit in South America. While there, he praised Cuba as "a shining pearl in the Caribbean Sea," and said the Chinese government "supports the just struggle of Cuba in maintaining state sovereignty and national independence against outside interference and threat."

Jiang Zemin described his two-week, six-country visit to Latin America as a China-led "new world order" and "strategic partnership," which includes satellite tracking stations in Brazil, electronic espionage stations in Cuba, an air force partnership with Venezuela, petroleum sites in Venezuela and Peru, and copper mines in Chile. All this is in addition to the ports China already controls at both ends of the Panama Canal and in the Bahamas.

Jiang's Latin American visit helped to block a U.S. motion at the United Nations to criticize China's human rights record on April 19. Six of the Latin countries Jiang visited were on the Commission.

On NBC's "Meet the Press," Rep. Henry Hyde, chairman of the House International Relations Committee, summed up the lesson we should learn. He said it's now clear that China is an "adversary" and "not a strategic partner."

So, why are we allowing Communist China to pocket $84 billion a year in U.S. cash from what is called "free trade"? The Chinese are able to put that $84 billion into military weapons to threaten us.