Excerpts from the Republican presidential debate between Texas Gov. George W. Bush, Alan Keyes and Sen. John McCain, as transcribed by the Federal Document Clearing House.

On relations with China.

BUSH: The current president has called the relationship with China a strategic partnership. I believe our relationship needs to be redefined as one as competitor. Competitors can find areas of agreement, but we must make it clear to the Chinese that we don't appreciate any attempt to spread weapons of mass destruction around the world, that we don't appreciate any threats to our friends and allies in the Far East.

MCCAIN: China is obviously a place where this -- one of the signal failures of this administration. Although there are certainly many failures throughout the world.

But I would also look very -- revise our policies concerning these rogue states: Iraq, Libya, North Korea -- those countries that continue to try to acquire weapons of mass destruction and the means to deliver them.

KEYES: I'm not interested in protectionism or withdrawal from the world. But I do think, if you happen to be the sponsors of the most lucrative market in the world, that folks ought to be paying a premium price to enter this market, or else giving us something concrete in return that's of tangible benefit to the whole American people, not just to a handful of international corporations.

On negative campaigning:

BUSH: Well, it's kind of politics. And John and I shook hands and we said we weren't going to run ads and I kind of smiled my way through the early primaries and got defined. I'm not going to let it happen again. And we shook hands and unfortunately he ran an ad that equated me to Bill Clinton -- he questioned my trustworthiness... I'm just saying, you can disagree on issues, we'll debate issues, but whatever you do, don't equate my integrity and trustworthiness to Bill Clinton. That's about as low a blow as you can give in a Republican primary.

MCCAIN: There was an ad run against me, we ran a counter-ad in New Hampshire, Governor Bush took the ad down. And then I was beat up very badly by all of his surrogates, called Clinton, called Clinton-lite, called every -- a hypocrite. I mean, you've seen... here in South Carolina. You've seen it -- turn on the radio, turn on the television, and unfortunately now pick up the telephone and you'll hear a negative attack against John McCain.

But let me tell you what really went over the line. Governor Bush had an event, and he paid for it, and standing -- and stood next to a spokesman for a fringe veterans' group. That fringe veteran said that John McCain had abandoned the veterans. Now, I don't know if you can understand this, George, but that really hurts, that really hurts.

KEYES: I think it's because people are trying so hard to be all things to all people that they refuse to stand forthrightly and make it clear on each given issue where they stand in a principled way and simply speak the truth and let the chips fall. And so they get into this spitting match over who did what to whom, as distraction from the lack of substance in their own campaigns. I think people need to start thinking about whether this is the kind of spectacle that actually characterizes a serious political process, because I don't think it does.

On campaign finance reform:

BUSH: Well, that's not true. I started talking about campaign finance reform last summer. And I said the following things: We ought to ban corporate soft money, and we ought to ban labor union soft money. We ought to make sure though, that labor bosses cannot spend union members' money without their permission. It's big difference between what I believe and John believes.

Thirdly, we should not allow federal candidates to take money from one campaign and roll it over into another campaign. That ought to be a reform.

And fifthly, what I said -- or fourthly, what I said... was that members of the United States Congress should not be allowed to raise money, when there's a legislative session -- that members should not be allowed to raise money from federal lobbyists during a session.

KEYES: Let me speak to this whole issue, because these folks sit here, two politicians, arguing about whether or not the people or the United States should have under the First Amendment the right peaceable to assemble and seek to petition the government and seek redress of their grievances.

I believe that all this talk where the politicians come in and say -- think about this, they're going to control our ability to fund those processes through which we control their activities. And by controlling our funding, I presume they will utterly destroy our First Amendment right.

There should be no such regulation by politicians of what we the people can do in our own political process.

MCCAIN: ...there's a $1 billion loophole in it (the Bush plan.) And it's called individual contributions. Mr. Bernard Schwartz, who is the head of Loral Corporation, gave $1 million individually to the Clinton-Gore campaign in 1996. A series of events then took place. The transfer of technology to China that allowed them to improve the tech -- their missile accuracy... Under his plan, Mr. Schwartz could walk down there and give that $1 million check tomorrow.