Chairman Gallagher's Remarks on the CCP's Threat to Taiwan during Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen's Visit to California at the Ronald Reagan Library
Click HERE for full remarks.
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President Reagan once said:
“If some of you fear taking a stand because you are afraid of reprisals…recognize that you are just feeding the crocodile, hoping he will eat you last.”
Watching the media coverage leading up to President Tsai’s visit today, I’ve been thinking about Reagan’s crocodile. Some pundits, who have failed to learn from decades of CCP behavior, have been wringing their hands, wondering if we’re being too provocative. If the duly elected democratic leader of one of our partners cannot meet with American elected leaders on American soil, then we are truly just feeding the crocodile that will eventually eat us.
Speaker McCarthy and this bipartisan delegation are here today to send a different message: we are not afraid. We will not normalize the Chinese Communist Party’s temper tantrums that are aimed at subjugating a democratic society. We support our friends in Taiwan, we’re going to keep saying that whenever we have the opportunity, and we’re going to turn those words into action this Congress.
Supporting Taiwan means supporting freedom itself. President Reagan made an observation about the Soviet Union that applies equally to China:
Of all the millions of refugees we've seen in the modern world, their flight is always away from, not toward the Communist world. Today on the NATO line, our military forces face east to prevent a possible invasion. On the other side of the line, the Soviet forces also face east to prevent their people from leaving.
The same dynamic plays out today. The CCP seizes its citizen passports, especially in Xinjiang and Tibet, and clamps down on visas for the rest of the country. Hundreds of thousands of Chinese refugees have come to the United States. None go the opposite way. In fact, the CCP establishes police stations around the world to hunt those who have fled their borders. They spend more on internal security than on their military—like the Soviet Union their guns point inwards first and foremost.
Taiwan, by contrast, is a small, but bright candle of freedom burning at the edge of a vast authoritarian darkness. Taiwan is a testament to something President Reagan said in front of the Brandenburg Gates:
“there stands before the entire world one great and inescapable conclusion: Freedom leads to prosperity. Freedom replaces the ancient hatreds among nations with comity and peace. Freedom is the victor.”