From the moment Bill Clinton took the oath of office on January 20, 1993, his Administration has been plagued by scandal. Error after error, transgression after transgression, and violation after violation have befallen his Presidency. Yet through it all, he has managed to survive, largely because, in the view of most Americans, his actions, reprehensible as they may be, were either far from the realm of policy, or limited to his person, and as such, would not extend beyond his term of office. That has clearly ended last week with the recent revelations about Chinese Communist espionage, and the Administrations stunning and frightening reaction.

While the actions and motives of the President himself can (and must) be investigated, the end of the Clinton Administration is not the end of the Communist China crisis. Far from it. In fact, the Beijing conundrum will continue to plague policymakers until they come face to face with the truth. Communist China is a repressive regime hostile to the United States, and it will continue to challenge American power, and world liberty, until it is overthrown and replaced by a democratic regime, either home grown or "imported" from free China (Taiwan). Such liberation will not come quickly, and certainly not by "strategic partnership." It can only come with a firm resolve to challenge Communist China's aggressiveness in the world-at-large and its legitimacy at home. Such resolve from this Administration has been non-existent, to put it mildly.

Bill Clinton's policy regarding Communist controlled China is unique among all the scandals of his reign. It is more than a personal foible; it is more than a policy error; it is more than a lapse in judgment; it is more than damaging to the safety of the American republic; it is more than a violation of the law. Bill Clinton's China policy, unlike any other matter, is all of the above at once, and the damage to both our nation and the cause of human freedom cannot be fully comprehended unless the issue is seen in this context.

Let us begin with the policy itself, euphemistically known as "constructive engagement," or even worse, "strategic partnership." Bill Clinton has asked the American people for the past six years to maintain and preserve close and friendly ties to a government that ruthlessly murdered hundreds of its own people in 1989, and who have, before and since, embarked on a policy with one objective, destroy the American hegemony won in the Cold War, retard the progress of human liberty, and establish itself as the rising power in East Asia and the world. They have pursued this policy through aggressive arms trading with our most passionate enemies, including Iran, Iraq, Sudan, Syria, and North Korea. Their funneling of arms has revealed the non-proliferation regime Clinton prides himself on to be a complete sham, and has destabilized the Middle East as well as East Asia. The Administration's silence on the matter has been deafening, and is nothing short of a wink and a nudge to Chinese Communists eager on establishing themselves as the ascendant world power.

We now know that China is largely responsible for providing North Korea with the know-how to launch their Taepodong rocket fired last summer over Japan. According to the Washington Times, China took the satellite launching information provided to them by Hughes Corporation (more on them later) in 1996 and relayed it to North Korea's government. Considering the fate of the people suffering under famine conditions in the world's last pure Stalinist state, one can only imagine what North Korea will do with this new key to nuclear blackmail. Just this morning it was revealed that North Korea could develop nuclear weapons in less then seven years.

By itself, this would be alarming, but Communist China has actually been more belligerent on its own, especially regarding territorial disputes. Vietnam, the Phillipines, and Indonesia have all seen Communist China's aggressiveness regarding the Spratley Islands, a region claimed by all four governments. While the former three seek mediation, the PRC has muscled out non-Chinese residents, mainly helpless fishermen, and established a military foothold on the islands, flouting international law.

To all of these actions, the Administration responds with forceful opening statements followed by quick retreats. Whatever lion Bill Clinton seems to be going into discussions with the PRC, he and his minions always exit as lambs. It is the foreign policy equivalent of bread and circuses, all done in the hope that the American people don't understand the game. The Chinese Communists do know the game, however, and they are playing for keeps.

Such a questionable policy of friendship and respect for a nation out to replace the United States as the leading world power has not been seen since the vacillating days of Jimmy Carter, but Clinton goes far beyond Carter in his slavishness to Beijing. Just last summer, while touring the mainland, the President stated in no uncertain terms that any attempt made by the one free, democratic region of China - namely Taiwan - for international recognition would be rebuffed. This policy, known as the "three 'nos'," is nothing less than a slap in the face to the 21 million residents of the free and democratic Republic of China. Just the other day, Bill Clinton apologized to Guatemala for the CIA's role in overturning a democratic but largely unpopular regime in that country in 1954. Yet the wishes of 21 million Chinese represented at the polls would be null and void if they include official independence from the Communist menace just across the Taiwan Straits.

This policy is more than just appalling; there is good reason to believe its illegal. The "three nos," whether a new Clinton creation or an inherited policy, violates the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979 in no fewer than four places. This Act is the bedrock of American support for Taiwan, and is in many respects the only legal force keeping Beijing from military action. If it can be so cavalierly disregarded, is Taiwan, or any U.S. ally for that matter, truly safe.

In Taiwan's case, the answer is frighteningly ambiguous. Communist China has greatly expanded its missile deployments near Taiwan, to such an extent that a Pentagon report claims that Beijing will have complete military superiority over their liberated province within ten years. To this, the Administration pledges to consider including Taiwan in a theater missile defense, and only after making sure every Communist Chinese politician knew that the U.S. wasn't even sure if such a defense would be built. Such craven actions are both crippling to U.S. prestige and a bald-faced breaking of the spirit, and the letter, of the Taiwan Relations Act.

If these alone was the Administrations policies, it would be bad enough, especially considering Clinton's weak reaction to Communist China's gruesome human rights policies. The callous refusal to discuss forced abortion, the immoral regulation of the Catholic Church, and the crackdowns on other churches and anything that smacks of a dissident political organization, would be unfortunate even if Beijing were an ally during war. As the leading threat to stability, world liberty and American power, their domestic actions should create official apoplexy, not approbation. The president's response has been nothing short of sickening.

Yet there is more. Recently, the New York Times revealed that a Chinese spy in the Energy Department stole American secrets for miniaturizing nuclear warheads in 1988. This technology allows Beijing to use multiple warheads of a design equal to the U.S., and move them leaps ahead of other nuclear states. One must remember Communist China already had, and was using, this technology when they made explicit threats of destroying Los Angeles in response to American defense of Taiwan if Beijing attacked them - threats repeated and extended to "American cities" of any name just last week. One must also remember the White House was informed of this espionage nearly three years ago, just after the threats were first made. The suspect, who worked at Energy's lab in Los Alamos, New Mexico, was not fired until this past Monday, almost three years after the White House was alerted to his potential espionage, and nearly four years after the Energy Department itself discovered it.

Both the Pentagon and the Energy Department admitted the espionage "greatly harmed national security." But no actions were taken to insure against such things happening again until new policy guidelines were drawn up in February 1998. To make matters worse, the policies were not implemented until October.

Also in 1996, the Administration watched as two satellite technology companies, Loral and the Hughes Corporation, provide sensitive missile launch data to the PRC to increase the reliability of Beijing's satellite launches. Ostensibly done to insure more successful launches for American satellite companies, the two firms' actions were also seen by the Pentagon as harmful to national security, and this was before it was known that the PRC passed this information on the North Korea.

Thus, Bill Clinton has allowed a government whose outward policies have challenged American power, and the American ideology of democratic liberty to a position unmatched by any other hostile nation since the Soviet Union began its slow surrender in 1987, all the while embracing it as a "strategic partner." Meanwhile he has allowed this same government to steal vital secrets from the American nuclear program, and coax them out of willing American firms. The question we must ask is: Why? The answer is complex, and the reasons are multiple.

First, Bill Clinton himself clearly had a domestic angle on relations with China, particularly dealing with campaign funds for his re-election effort and those of fellow Democrats. During the very month that the White House was informed of the Los Alamos incident, Al Gore held his infamous fund raiser in Los Angeles, where Buddhist nuns and priests acted as straw men to funnel $50,000 to Democrats from unknown Chinese sources. At the same time, Johnny Chung was funneling $100,000 from a n aerospace company controlled by the Chinese Communist People's Liberation Army into the Democratic National Committee.

How much Clinton knew about these transactions is a subject of debate. What is clear is that when the matter was again referred to the White House in mid-1997, a Congressional investigation into the fund raising practice was in full swing, and rather than inform Congress of the matter, the Administration squashed it. During an investigation by the Senate Intelligence Committee last year, the Energy department's counterintelligence chief was ordered not to testify for fear his information would be used to attack the president's China policy.

So whether it was to preserve a failing policy or to avoiding exposing his ethical lapses, the president and his aides clearly saw silence as preferable to the truth, and obfuscation as better than a fully informed debate on Chinese policy. In fact, it wasn't until a special select committee headed by Christopher Cox came calling that the Administration finally opened up on Los Alamos and other unknown incidents (the report is still awaiting declassification after being approved by all committee members, including all four Democrats).

But to say that Administration policy was controlled solely by campaign contributions grossly understates the nature of the problem. For from being just another example of Clinton's lack of character, it is an indictment on an entire way of geopolitical thinking, shared not only by the President but all in his Administration and a large part of the his party, including his heir apparent, Al Gore.

For years, even centuries, American foreign policy has been centered on European events. The notion of other regions having equal importance was not seriously considered until World War II, and even then it was (rightly) rejected. Such eurocentricism (not to be confused the term used by multiculturalists to bash Western culture) nearly lost the Cold War during the 1970s. When the "Reagan doctrine" made clear Soviet aggression would be fought all over the globe, the tide of the Cold War turned forever.

Despite this fact, the idea that the next challenge to American hegemony and the rise of liberty would come from somewhere other the Europe or where Europe gets its vital resources (the Middle East) is practically heresy to the foreign policy establishment. Thus Bill Clinton, who had to rely on said establishment like no presidency before him, has slowly turned America from leader of Europe to follow of Europe, and has all but ignored geopolitics in other regions. This leads to domestic issues overriding geopolitical ones outside of Europe - from the harsh treatment of Japan, our oldest Asian ally, through our strange ceding of African policy to French interests, to our deployment to Bosnia (and possibly Kosovo) simply because of European requests. For many in the State Department, Europe is still the be-all and end-all of geopolitics - nothing else even registers.

This world view completely misses, almost deliberately, the rise of Chinese Communism. Despite vague notions of "reform," the Chinese Communists still ban private property, freedom of religion, and any political expression that challenges the supremacy of the Communist Party. To Asia, they are a clear threat. To Europe, they're an ex-quasi- colony that can't be understood. Otherwise, they would have been subdued. To Foggy Bottom, they are a large and powerful nation from a remote region that should be co-opted. That such co-opting is impossible is not even considered, after all, all non-Europeans can be co-opted, can't they?

This is the same wooly-headedness that led to the "détente" of the 1970's. Luckily, the cure for Soviet "détente," namely the Reagan Doctrine, will also work nicely with China. By working together with both our current allies and some of the PRC's bitterest rivals (the newly-nuclearized India for example), we can contain Communist expansion in Asia, or other regions of the world. Furthermore, the democratic government of Taiwan, either as Nationalist China or an independent republic, can be a shining example of Chinese liberty. It can also be a strategic beachhead for intelligence and propaganda. Most importantly, it can be a refuge and a launching point for native mainlanders fighting to overthrow the Communist regime. To some extent the captive nation of Tibet can achieve these purposes as well, but in a more clandestine matter, much like Poland in the 1980's. The Chinese are a patient people; their Communist leaders feel they need only wait us out. By assuring them, and the world, that we will never yield to them abroad or in their own country, we can end the regime faster than anyone can imagine.

Twenty years ago, the Soviets were consolidating their hold on Eastern Europe and expanding their world influence. Ten years ago this month, the idea of liberating Eastern Europe seemed impossible, while Communist China was slowly flexing its muscles. Today, liberating mainland China seems far-fetched. Don't believe it. With resolve, toughness, and clear thinking, we can reverse Beijing's gains and force the regime to implode. Next year is the Year of the Dragon on the Chinese calendar. It is a year of major changes and upheaval. Let the next upheaval be the liberation of China from its Communist oppressors!