Hearing on “U.S.-China Trade Impacts on the U.S. Defense Industrial Base”
Opening Statement of June Teufel Dreyer
Commissioner and Hearing Cochair
June 23, 2005
Washington, DC
Good morning. I am particularly looking forward to today’s hearing. In 1995, I was commissioned to conduct a study of the Library’s Chinese language holdings with regard to documents related to national security issues. The results showed that the collection was seriously lacking in many regards. My colleague and one of today’s panelists, David Shambaugh, conducted a similar study in 1999. He reached similar conclusions, including such devastating organizational findings as a five-year backlog of cataloguing new acquisitions.
The Commission addressed the status of the collections in its 2002 Report to Congress. It furthermore concluded that improved collections were necessary for policymakers to have a clear understanding of Chinese perceptions toward the U.S. Today there is much debate whether China is a friend or a foe. We cannot hope to be able to address this issue intelligently without recourse to the Chinese documents themselves. It is my understanding that there have been several improvements since both my 1995 study and Professor Shambaugh’s 1999 study, such as new online catalogues and expansion of the Chinese periodicals section. These changes are important, but I fear many more remain.
Today’s second panel will consist of the aforementioned Professor David Shambaugh, who is Director of the China Policy Program at George Washington University. In addition to the many China-related topics he is expert in, Professor Shambaugh has extensive knowledge of the mainland China publishing industry. Next we will hear from Dr. James Mulvenon, Director of Advanced Studies for the Center for Intelligence Research and Analysis at DGI Inc. and a frequent consumer of the Library of Congress Chinese collections and services. Finally we have Dr. Chi Wang, the former head of the Chinese section of the Library of Congress. He has a long and distinguished career in Chinese language library collections.
Thank you all for joining us.