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| May 26, 2000 | atimes.com | ||
|  | China Trading human, labor rights for markets By Jim Lobe WASHINGTON - The US House of Representatives, handing President Bill Clinton his biggest trade victory since 1994, approved permanent normal trade relations (PNTR) status for China on Wednesday. The 237-197 vote, which also marked a major win for the Congressional Republican leadership, capped an all-out campaign by Clinton and US big business, which spent some $20 million on ads and on lobbying lawmakers to back PNTR, more than it has on any other single legislative measure. It also spelled a major setback for a resurgent US trade-union movement which had made defeating PNTR its top legislative priority this year. The unions, worried that PNTR will mean the loss of tens of thousands of US manufacturing jobs to China, put heavy pressure on Democratic lawmakers to break with Clinton and Vice President Al Gore, who badly needs labor's enthusiastic support in November's presidential elections. In the end, about two-thirds of the House Democratic caucus voted against the bill. Joining unions in opposition were some environmental and human rights groups, as well as right-wing forces, mostly Republicans, who believe that China's communist government represents a long-range threat to US national security. The bill, which is set to pass by a wider margin in the Senate later this week, will enable US companies to take full advantage of a sweeping trade accord concluded between Washington and Beijing last November. That agreement, the price for US support for China's entry into the World Trade Organization, requires Beijing to open its economy much wider to foreign investment and imports. Under it, China must slash tariffs on imports ranging from agricultural products to automobiles and offer foreign investors much greater freedom in distributing goods and services and investing in Chinese enterprises. China concluded a similar accord with the European Union just last week. By granting PNTR, Congress will end a practice that has been in effect since the two countries normalized diplomatic ties more than 20 years ago. Until now, NTR could be extended by the president for only one year at a time, and his decision could be debated and overruled by Congress. Such debates have taken place each year since the 1989 crackdown by Beijing against China's ''pro-democracy movement''. Although Congress has never overruled the president's decision, the debates themselves have been seen by PNTR foes as a key source of leverage in pressing China to improve its human-rights performance. Beijing, on the other hand, has complained bitterly about the process. The fundamental issue at stake Wednesday was whether Congress was prepared to forgo the annual NTR review process and ratify US support for China's WTO membership in exchange for the concessions offered by China in the November accord. In reality, however, the debate was as much about the future of relations with the world's most populous nation as it was about the precise elements of the trade deal. PNTR proponents, for example, argued that increased economic engagement with Beijing, and the greater exposure to US business and culture that it would bring, would serve in the long run to promote US values and ideals in China. They were backed by well-known Chinese dissidents and reformers, including Martin Lee, the chair of Hong Kong's Democratic Party; Wang Dan, an exiled leader of the 1989 movement; and Dai Qing, China's most outspoken environmentalist, who argued recently that further economic liberalisation in China will ''break the monopoly of the state'' there. But PNTR foes, noting that the state department's own annual human rights reports had shown a steady deterioration in China's performance, despite closer economic ties with the West over the past decade, argued the reverse. ''We have been told over the last decade that human rights in China would improve if we had unconditional trade benefits for China,'' said Rep Nancy Pelosi, an anti-PNTR leader. ''Not so. More people are imprisoned for their beliefs in China today than at any time since the cultural revolution.'' The anti-PNTR forces also relied on prominent dissidents to make their case, particularly Wei Jingsheng, a leader of the 1978 ''Democracy Wall'' movement who was exiled here several years ago. ''Hundreds of dissidents, religious figures, labor activists, and voices of conscience in China are still alive today and able to speak as a direct consequence of the US ability to threaten withdrawal of trade benefits,'' he wrote last week in the Wall Street Journal. If human rights was one key theme in Wednesday's debate, national security was another on which Clinton and his top aides increasingly focused their own arguments in recent days. Rejecting PNTR, he said at one point, would only strengthen ''the more conservative elements of the (Chinese) military who would like to have greater tensions between ourselves and them.'' But national security was also much on the minds of PNTR foes, some of whom have long seen Beijing as an emerging superpower bent on challenging US primacy and invading Taiwan. ''They stole our nuclear secrets,'' said Dan Burton, one of about 60 Republicans who deserted their own leadership. ''They now have the ability to kill 50 million people in this country with one missile.'' Stripped of those issues, however, the basic fight was between business and labor. Labor, which claims the loss of tens of thousands of manufacturing jobs to Mexico as a result of the North American Free Trade Agreement, sees the China deal as even more threatening. ''Corporate America does not see China as a great place to sell things,'' said Rep Brad Sherman. ''They see it as a great place to make things to sell here.'' China last year achieved a record $68 billion surplus with the United States. Business associations, including the Business Roundtable and the Chamber of Commerce, on the other hand, insisted the new trade agreement would create tens of thousands of new jobs here as China's market opened far wider to US exports. As the day of the vote neared, Clinton and the Republican leadership agreed to back a package of measures designed to sway undecided lawmakers that Congress will still have a substantial say in US China policy even without its annual NTR review. Among other provisions, it establishes a high-level commission to monitor China's human-rights record and trade compliance and make recommendations, including opposing loans by the World Bank or the US Export-Import Bank to punish Beijing for bad behavior. In addition, the package includes safeguards against import surges from China. More parochial deals also were struck to ensure a majority for PNTR, including a special package of investment incentives for certain poor Congressional districts with large minority populations and waivers on environmental regulations for a gas pipeline being built through three Congressional districts in Texas. Clinton was backed by several former presidents, including Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and George Bush. Bush's son, the presumptive Republican presidential candidate, Texas Gov. George W Bush, also backed the bill. Indeed, Bush showed more enthusiasm for PNTR than Gore, his Democratic rival in the November elections. Vice president Gore, clearly concerned about his ties to labor, tried as much as possible to remain in the shadows during the lobbying campaign, much to the chagrin of both Clinton and his business contributors. (Inter Press Service) | |||||||||
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