Republican Voltage Keeps Radio Free Asia Buzzing

Here’s a Washington version of a man-bites-dog story, one that runs contrary to stereotype:

Despite their proclivity for budget cutting, Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) and the House Republicans--with the support of President Clinton--are creating a big new Washington organization. They got it up and running from scratch last year and are in the process of quadrupling its budget.

The beneficiary of this Gingrichian largess is Radio Free Asia, the broadcasting agency aimed at sending news into Far East countries where the press is subject to censorship. RFA, which just celebrated its first birthday, now beams radio programs to China, North Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Myanmar and (starting last week) Cambodia.

You’d think, based on Gingrich’s past rhetoric, that any government-funded creation would be a deadly bore. In fact, RFA’s Washington headquarters is a pretty lively place, one that seems more attuned than the State Department to nongovernmental life in Asia and to opposition political movements.

One recent morning, RFA’s service for Myanmar was preparing a story on the democratic forces in that country allied with Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi. Its Tibet reporters were keeping track of developments among that country’s exiles in India. RFA’s China staff was reporting on the activities of several Chinese dissidents.

And the Korean branch was interviewing two defectors from North Korea--former officials who explained how Pyongyang’s embassies overseas had been so impoverished that they had to raise cash by buying underwear cheaply in one capital and reselling it at higher prices in another.

Not surprisingly, such reporting has irritated Asian governments. RFA has been jammed in Vietnam, North Korea and China.

Indeed, on Aug. 18, the Chinese regime launched an intense drive to jam Radio Free Asia, an effort that continues. On Tuesday, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman denounced RFA, saying it was trying “to use freedom of speech as a reason, or excuse, to interfere in the internal politics of Asian countries.”

A decade ago, such Chinese complaints were directed at the Voice of America, the official U.S. government broadcasting agency. VOA transmits more news about the rest of the world than RFA, and less about the domestic politics of individual countries.

Now, VOA broadcasts that would once have aroused Chinese protests seem to be tolerated and are jammed less than Radio Free Asia. It’s almost a good-cop, bad-cop approach. “We’re the devil that they know,” quips Evelyn Lieberman, VOA’s new director.

The idea for RFA was first put forward by Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.). Clinton supported the idea in his 1992 presidential campaign and has done so ever since. In fact, RFA is one of the few elements of U.S. policy toward China on which Clinton has not changed his position over the past five years.

But it is Gingrich who is the driving force behind the current moves in Congress to pour more money into RFA.

RFA now has a budget of $10 million and a staff of 117. It has bureaus across Asia. It is starting to take on the trappings of a typical Washington bureaucracy, with a press spokesman, a congressional expert and a “communications and design coordinator.”

Yet earlier this year, Gingrich and House Republican leaders settled on a plan to provide $30 million more to augment RFA’s broadcasting to China, along with an additional $3.5 million for VOA. Why? There are essentially two factors: the continued jamming and the politics surrounding China’s status as a full trade partner with the United States.

Members of Congress realize that U.S. businesses are vehemently opposed to any restriction on trade with China. Yet the legislators want to demonstrate in some other way that they are working to combat China’s continuing repression of political dissent. They don’t want to throw up their hands and do nothing. Building up RFA is the one solution that has emerged.

Because of China’s heavy jamming, RFA is trying to buy and upgrade existing transmitters on the islands of Saipan and Tinian. Some of the new money would go for this hardware. In addition, under Gingrich’s proposal, RFA would expand its China broadcasts from seven to 24 hours a day, launching new programs in Cantonese and the Wu dialect, and adding to its existing Mandarin and Tibetan programs.

The result is again contrary to past stereotypes about Washington: At the moment, far more money, attention and resources are being devoted to Asia than to Europe.

In Europe, VOA broadcasts aimed at the Bosnian Serbs, a vital part of U.S. foreign policy there, are operating on a shoestring. “We’re basically going from month to month on this,” VOA’s Frank Shkreli recently told Times correspondent Tyler Marshall.

But at Radio Free Asia, the main problem these days seems to be figuring out how to use most efficiently the money Congress will be bestowing upon it.

“We’re just lucky,” observes RFA’s President Richard Richter. He adds, cautiously, “Or maybe it’s not lucky we have to expand this much.”

Jim Mann’s column appears in this space every Wednesday.