Maybe Biden did "fully understand" China's one-child policy

After Joe Biden told China’s leaders that he “fully understood” their brutal one-child policy and wouldn’t “second-guess” it, the Obama administration moved somewhat belatedly to contain the damage.  The White House insisted that they opposed the one-child policy and that Biden found the practice “repugnant.”  They also insisted that Biden had called the practice “unsustainable,” which Allahpundit explained wasn’t actually true; he called their safety-net structure unsustainable as a result of the low birth rate in China and the gender imbalance that will suppress procreation for decades longer.

The best one could conclude was that Biden was just ignorant,  but new information from LifeNews today that Biden doesn’t have that excuse:

Steven Mosher, the president of the Population Research Institute, personally witnessed the one-child policy put in place in China decades ago and saw first-hand how family planning officials used forced abortions and sterilizations to respond to women and couples who violated the draconian policy. Mosher is credited with exposing the one-child policy and bringing international attention to it. …

“While serving as a Commissioner of the U.S. Commission on Broadcasting to China, I briefed then-Senator Biden on population control, Chinese style,” he said. “I know that Joe Biden ‘fully understands’ how women are arrested for the ‘crime’ of being pregnant, how they are incarcerated and browbeaten for this ‘crime,’ and how they are forced to undergo abortions and sterilizations. I know because I told him so.”

Mosher says, “The Vice President was clearly pandering to his Chinese hosts. This wasn’t ignorance and it wasn’t a gaffe. Biden wanted China’s communist leaders to know that he and the President he serves are more than willing to turn a blind eye to the atrocities committed in the name of the one-child policy. In other words, Joe Biden has perfected the kowtow.”

It’s not the first time that Biden has turned a blind eye to this practice in order to pander to China, although he had plenty of company in 2000 while serving in the Senate:

Meanwhile, Biden himself has gone to great lengths to condemn the one-child policy in the past and, while a Delaware senator, in 2000, Biden called China’s one-child policy “beyond the pale” in a speech on the Senate floor. “No member of Congress condones the practice of coerced abortion in China or anyplace else,” he said, according to Delaware online.

Yet, Biden was one of 24 Democrats and 53 senators voting to defeat an amendment that year by then-Sen. Jessie Helms, a North Carolina Republican, for a non-binding resolution from the Senate condemning the one-child policy. He claims that doing so would jeopardize trade relations with the large Asian nation.

That vote took place on September 13th, 2000 as an amendment to the extension of normal trade relations with China (which used to be called “most favored nation status” until that phrase became politically toxic in connection with China).  It wouldn’t have changed the status at all, but only offered a non-binding and unenforceable statement that the President should urge China to change its one-child policy.  Biden voted against it, as did a bipartisan mix of Senators, while a bipartisan mix voted to approve the amendment.

Don’t forget that the Congressional-Executive Commission on China outlined in its most recent report the brutal methods China uses to enforce its one-child policy, which I covered in my column for The Week.  The CECC makes that clear in every annual report they produce.  But even if Biden can claim ignorance of the CECC’s detailed allegations, he can’t claim that he’s ignorant of China’s brutality and butchery, thanks to Mosher.