Tue, Jan 20, 2015 page7

• House panel leader on Asia ready to deal with China

  • AP, WASHINGTON
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  The new leader of the US House of Representatives panel overseeing US policy on Asia and the Pacific is a rarity in Congress: A deeply conservative Republican who shuns isolationism, favors closer ties with Asia and stands poised to praise as well as criticize China — and even do it in Mandarin.

  US Representative Matt Salmon of Arizona is part of the Tea Party movement that advocates small government, takes a tough line on immigration and opposes US President Barack Obama at every turn.

  However, Salmon also brings a unique perspective on Asia. He spent two years as a Mormon missionary in Taiwan, where he learned to speak Chinese. He says he has visited China more than 40 times, and during an earlier three-term stint in Congress that ended in 2000, he met with China’s then-leader to help secure the release of a US college researcher accused of stealing state secrets.

  Salmon embraces an active US role in Asia, including a regional free-trade agreement. In a Congress where China typically faces stiff criticism from Republicans and Democrats alike, Salmon has a more balanced view.

  “I want to be seen as someone who wants to work with China, but I’m certainly not going to be an appeaser,” Salmon told reporters about his chairmanship of the US House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific.

  The 56-year-old said he would be upbeat where appropriate, but “I’m going to be blunt sometimes.”

  He showed a willingness to do that at a hearing early last year that examined China’s aggressive pursuit of territorial claims in the disputed seas of East Asia. He told lawmakers that China was playing a game of dare and seeing “if the US has the guts” to challenge it.

  Salmon has a background in telecommunications and public relations. He has most recently chaired a subcommittee overseeing policy toward Latin and Central America, often probing the US response to cross-border migration.

  The Asia panel Salmon will now chair has become more active than its US Senate counterpart, although traditionally the upper chamber has been viewed as more influential in US foreign policy, said former Republican representative Jim Leach, who chaired the subcommittee from 1996 to 2001.

  The political background of the chair matters less than their understanding of the region and staff support, he said.

  “My priority is going to be helping the president keep his promise on pivoting to Asia, which really hasn’t materialized yet,” Salmon said, referring to Obama’s attempt to shift more US attention to the fast-growing region after the post-Sept. 11, 2001, preoccupation with the Middle East.

  Salmon lambasted the president for failing to win congressional support last year for the main trade pillar of the pivot: a 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).

  “Obama used no political capital, as he doesn’t have any,” Salmon said.

  Salmon is a long-time advocate of economic engagement with China, which is not in the TPP. He backed granting Beijing permanent most-favored-nation trade status and its 2001 accession to the WTO. That provided leverage to persuade then-Chinese president Jiang Zemin (江澤民) to release Yongyi Song, the US college researcher who had been arrested for gathering archive material on Mao Zedong’s (毛澤東) Cultural Revolution.

  “Salmon understood that when you deal with China on trade, you should still insist on democratic principles,” said Song, now a librarian and professor at California State University’s Los Angeles campus. “He actually argued with China’s top leader to win my release.”
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