Loss of Pressure

David Bosco

Much has been made of Representative Christopher Cox's coziness with business interests. His nomination to head the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) brought words of praise from the corporate world, which is eager for a relaxation of regulation imposed after a spate of corporate scandals. "He will bring the kind of philosophy that's needed to move the SEC forward at this time," gushed David Hirschmann of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

But Cox's nomination may also have pleased a very different group: the Chinese Communist Party. For years, the congressman has been a tenacious advocate of human rights in China. With Cox safely ensconced at the SEC--where he'll have little opportunity to meddle in foreign policy--Capitol Hill will lose an important voice on Chinese human rights.

One might not have guessed that a pro-business Republican would become a crusader for human rights in China. A graduate of Harvard's business and law schools, Cox ascended to the rank of partner at a major international law firm before arriving in Congress. Often described as cerebral, hard working, and methodical, Cox lacks an activist's temperament; details, not dudgeon, seem to be his strength. But since he was first elected in 1988, Cox has made Chinese violations of human rights a constant theme. "He's one of the important players on Chinese human rights," says T. Kumar, an Asia specialist at Amnesty International. His solid reputation in the Republican caucus, according to Kumar, makes him all the more valuable.

Most recently, Cox has advocated funding technologies that could foil China's Internet censors, and he has not hesitated to criticize the Bush administration for moving slowly on the issue. He is crafting a bill--the Global Internet Freedom Act--that would create an office (with a $50 million budget) devoted to circumventing the firewalls of repressive regimes. "He really believes in this bill," says Lucie Morillon of the advocacy group Reporters Without Borders, which has worked with Cox on the legislation. "We don't know exactly what will happen [when he leaves Congress]. It's kind of an uncomfortable moment for us."

If cutting-edge technology is his current focus, old fashioned moral outrage is still a staple. On the fifteenth anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre in June 2004, he took to the House floor and excoriated China's rulers who, he said, "have repudiated nothing that happened 15 years ago." The Chinese foreign ministry fired back. "There are a handful of people in the United States Congress that cannot stand what happens in China and they are using all kinds of pretexts to defame China," a spokesman said.

One of Cox's frequent "pretexts" has been Chinese political prisoners like Yang Jianli, an organizer of the 1989 pro-democracy demonstrations who has been in a Chinese prison for more than three years on charges of spying. Cox has drafted letters to the Chinese authorities on Yang's case and sponsored House resolutions calling for his release. Cox has also closely monitored the Communist Party's tightening grip on Hong Kong. "The people of Hong Kong know they must defend their democracy and way of life against communist oppression," he has said. "Now it is up to us to remind them that the American people stand with them."

Cox's criticisms of China have not been limited to human rights. He worries as well about the goliath's strategic ambitions. "There has been a manifest change in the PRC's approach to geopolitics since 1991," he warned in 1998. "The Communist Party has decided to fill the void left by the collapse of the Soviet Union. It has aligned itself with opponents of the United States around the globe. It is stitching together an alliance of misfits."

Indeed, Cox made his biggest splash as the chair of an investigative committee on Chinese nuclear espionage during the Clinton years. Working with Congressman Norm Dicks, a Democrat from Washington, Cox crafted a hard-hitting report that won bipartisan support. Its findings even led Democrat Nancy Pelosi to savage the Clinton administration's handling of nuclear security. Unsurprisingly, the report outraged the Chinese government; a spokesman for the foreign ministry accused Cox's panel of "clinging to the Cold War mentality." The committee, the spokesman said, had "staged an anti-China farce in order to spread the theory of a China threat and damage the friendly ties between the peoples of China and the United States." Even some at home wondered if Cox wasn't stoking a dangerous "yellow peril" attitude. The congressman found himself fending off charges of anti-Chinese racial bias. "It is outrageous to think that if you are on the side of freedom for the Chinese people and opposed to communism that you are anything but pro-Chinese," he responded.

It's a sentiment that President Bush himself endorsed during his first campaign for the White House. Like Clinton before him, however, Bush tempered his rhetoric once in office. And this year, the Bush team declined to offer its customary resolution condemning China at the UN Human Rights Commission. In this atmosphere of accommodation, principled pressure from the Hill is a valuable check on White House realpolitik.

Of course, it's not clear that White House officials had any of this in mind when they tapped Cox for the SEC job; they may never have considered it. But whatever the administration's intent, the result will be the same: Muffling Cox on China will be a nice side benefit to having him at the SEC--for Bush, for big business, and, most of all, for China's ruling regime.

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Source: "The New Republic Online".