Bob Dole lobbyist for China

If you haven't heard, there's no such thing as free trade. When you hear that the US has a free trade agreement with China, it's false. There's no such thing as free trade. Try selling your product to a foreign country. It costs money. Lots of money in tariffs and other fees. Only the US allows country's like China to sell their goods in our country for little or nothing. Why? Because China has bought the most powerful lobbying groups in Washington DC, including Bob Dole. Once a powerful Senate leader and Republican nominee for president, Bob Dole over the last decade has remade himself into one of Washington's most influential lobbyists at Alston + Bird.

(Examiner)
Bob Dole, the 1996 Republican presidential candidate, has been on the Republic of China in-exile payroll as a foreign agent since 1998. Hired to gain access to the White House and Congress for the exiled Chinese Nationalist government, Dole has also been a mouthpiece for the ROC in the American media.

Dole’s latest paid political announcement is a guest editorial in the Washington Times where he defends the controversial Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement recently signed between the Kuomintang government of Ma Ying-jeou and the People’s Republic of China which claims Taiwan rightfully belongs to China.

Taiwan has been under occupation rule of the Nationalist Chinese since October 1945 when the United States Navy landed the KMT troops to process surrendering Japanese soldiers. The United States, named the “principal occupying Power” of Taiwan in the 1952 San Francisco Peace Treaty, has allowed the ROC to govern Taiwan for six decades instead of permitting self-determination for the island residents.

Dole, as a former powerful U.S. Senator, has long been friendly with the exiled Chinese regime and has encouraged the “strategic ambiguity” that defines Taiwan’s international status. Last year the District of Columbia U.S. Court of Appeals described the people of Taiwan as ”stateless” and living in a U.S. imposed “political purgatory” that adversely effects the daily life of 23 million islanders.

Dole’s latest paid pronouncement leaves little doubt that self-determination for the people of Taiwan is not part of his lobbying contract. Although the Washington Times editorial identified Dole as a former senator and presidential candidate, it did not disclose his role as a foreign agent working for the Washington law firm Alston & Bird.

“”Some critics of the agreement argue that the ECFA will overly expand Taiwan’s economic dependence on China in ways that threaten the country’s politico-military system (in other words, de facto sovereignty). In my view, the globalization of the economy makes the ECFA necessary and thereby outweighs these concerns.”

According to Legal Times the former Republican leader was paid $30,000 a month to provide “strategic advice and counseling” to his ROC paymasters.

Along the way Dole changed law firms and brought his Chinese business to Alston & Bird where he now brings in $25,000 per month to “set up meetings with U.S. lawmakers” according to the Media General News Service.

Dole’s editorial touting the ECFA does not mention the concerns of thousands of Taiwanese who took to the streets last week to oppose the ECFA and ask for a referendum.