Friday, August 26, 2011
By Penny Starr

U.S. Vice President Joe Biden speaking at Sichuan University in Chengdu, Sichuan province, China, on Sunday, Aug. 21, 2011. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)

(CNSNews.com) – The recent news reports about Vice President Joe Biden not “second-guessing” China’s one-child policy were a surprise to Steven Mosher, president of the Population Research Institute (PRI), who had numerous discussions with then-Senator Biden on the topic when both men were working on establishing Free Radio Asia in the early 1990s.
“When [Biden] says he totally understands the one-child policy, I take him at his word,” Mosher told CNSNews.com, adding that he had briefed Biden at length about how the policy led to forced abortions and sterilizations.
“He does” understand the gravity of China’s policy, Mosher said. “I told him so.”
Biden made the “second-guessing” remarks during his just-completed trip to China in a speech at Sichuan University on Aug. 21, sparking criticism from Republicans and others.
“Your policy has been one which I fully understand — I’m not second-guessing — of one child per family,” Biden said, adding that asking one-wage earner to support an entire family was “not sustainable.”
But Mosher said Biden’s remarks seemed to send a different message.
“When he says he’s not going to second-guess it, that’s bizarre because it has been a consistent policy of the United States since the Reagan administration to deplore and condemn the violations of human rights of the one-child policy,” Mosher said.
The discussions between Mosher and Biden took place in 1991 and 1992 when Mosher was serving on a congressional commission to study the idea of Radio Free Asia, in part as a response to the Tiananmen Square massacre of hundreds of pro-democracy protesters by Communist Chinese authorities in 1989.
At that time, Biden was a senior member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which heard testimony from the commission following the report it released on the proposed radio project. And Biden introduced legislation in 1992 to create Radio Free Asia, which was authorized by Congress and established in 1996.
Mosher said Biden’s comments can damage U.S. influence on human rights issues.

Vice President Joe Biden meets with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao at the Purple Light Pavillion in Beijing on August 19, 2011. (Official White House Photo by David Lienemann)

“I think that’s a terrible position for the United States to be in – in terms of abandoning our principles,” Mosher said. “How can we speak to the brutalities committed by dictators elsewhere if we don’t speak openly of what I consider to be the major ongoing human rights violation in the world today?”
Mosher has more than an intellectual interest in China’s one-child policy, which was put in place in 1978.
Read More: http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/population-expert-briefed-biden-extensiv