Chapter 1. 1976

Upon the death of the Chinese dictator, I made this statement, which may be more hawkish than I would be today, but we certainly have moral authority to state our position without violating the independence of others.

September 15, 1976
THE DEATH OF MAO TSE-TUNG
HON. RON PAUL of TEXAS
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

Mr. Speaker, for many years now there has been virtual censorship in America about the true facts regarding oppression in Communist China. We are seeing this once again in the press coverage of the death of Mao Tse-tung. He is portrayed as a great leader and a shrewd politician—which indeed he was—but this completely overlooks the monstrous tyranny he exercised over the Chinese people.

There is no doubt that China is a very different place today than it was in 1949, but to equate change with progress would be a serious error. We simply cannot judge Mao Tse-tung outside a moral context. We cannot praise him for bringing industrial development to China while ignoring the millions of Chinese who were put to death for opposing communism and the millions more who live, but in abject slavery.

It is true that Chinese values are different from those in America and the West, but it is foolish to believe that the Chinese people do not have the same yearning for freedom that we have. This fact is confirmed by the untold thousands who have risked their lives to escape Communist totalitarianism for the liberty of Hong Kong.

We are asked to be “realists” and overlook such unpleasantries because we need the support of Communist China as a balance to the growing military power of the Soviet Union. This is a foolish and shortsighted policy that simply repeats America’s past error of treating all of our enemies’ enemies as our friends. This policy has probably done more to destroy our credibility as a champion of freedom in the world than any other thing.

Americans pride themselves for having broken with the balance-of-power politics of Europe and establishing a foreign policy that not only upholds American interests, but is moral as well. This is a tradition which is as old as the country itself and which survives today, in spite of Henry Kissinger’s efforts to destroy it.

It is unfortunate that our foreign policy has been so mismanaged that the American people now seem to equate a moral foreign policy with an interventionist foreign policy. The two are not at all synonymous. A condemnation of Communist tyranny ought not to imply the threat of U.S. intervention. Nor should it imply support for every petty dictatorship in the world that pays lip service to anticommunism.

America must remain forthright in a universal opposition to tyranny. This is why we must recognize Mao Tse-tung for what he was: perhaps the most oppressive dictator who ever lived. We should not be afraid to say so and we should make it clear to his successor that so long as the Chinese people remain slaves, they can expect no support from the United States.