[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 62 (Wednesday, May 18, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: May 18, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
               THE IMPOSITION OF TRADE SANCTIONS ON CHINA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from North Carolina [Mr. Rose] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. ROSE. Mr. Speaker, I wish to express my agreement with the 
position stated earlier this week by Mr. Mitchell, the distinguished 
Senate majority leader, in which Senator Mitchell called for trade 
sanctions against China unless the Chinese Government improves its 
human rights policies by June 3.
  June 3 is the date designated for President Clinton to make a 
decision on the renewal of most-favored-nation [MFN] trade status with 
China. In his Executive order last June, the President solemnly 
promised that he would revoke MFN unless China made overall, 
significant progress, on such human rights issues as protecting Tibet's 
unique culture, freeing political prisoners, and ending the use of 
prison labor to manufacture export goods.
  Mr. Speaker, the Chinese failed to respect the President's call, 
their policies have shown even less respect for the principles of human 
freedom.
  The terms of the Executive order have clearly not been met. Even if 
MFN is to be extended it must be strongly conditioned with strong and 
specific sanction.
  During the 1992 election campaign, Mr. Clinton criticized then-
President Bush for unwillingness to condition trade on human rights. He 
spoke in the aftermath of the Tianamen Square massacre. Now the ball is 
in President Clinton's court. The time has come for us to demonstrate 
to the Beijing Governing that we mean business.
  Senator Mitchell said he was drafting sanctions because he believes 
that China has not met the conditions specified by President Clinton. I 
propose to strongly support those sanctions unless the President acts 
in the next 2 weeks. Let the White House stand advised that the 
Congress will not ignore the brutality of the Chinese authorities in 
the area of human rights.
  When we consider the mutual trade question regarding China, I suggest 
that we remain mindful of America's greatest export--the principles of 
freedom and liberty. This ideal principle is inherent in the universal 
democracy concept that Thomas Jefferson saw as our mission among the 
nations. Let us honor America's true heritage in our China policy.
  China has just issued an order widening police powers to detain 
dissidents and restrict proponents of democracy. There are now reports 
of outrageous persecution in Tibet involving denial of religious and 
cultural freedom. The Dalai Lama was led to believe by our Government 
that we really cared about what happened to the Tibetan people and the 
Buddhist faith.
  I hope the President addresses this matter in the next 2 weeks in 
keeping with the integrity and vision that led him to issue his 
Executive order last June.
  It has been said that unbridled capitalism would bring freedom to 
China and we should ignore human rights. This is not American free 
enterprise, It is unbridled, raw, greedy, uncontrolled, laissez-faire 
exploitation reinforced by the police power of the state. I would like 
to incorporate into my remarks at this point an article in the 
Washington Post on May 13 by Professor Dorothy Solinger of the 
University of California who has studied the MFN renewal issue:

              In China, Capitalists Abuse Human Rights Too

                         (By Dorothy Solinger)

       As the administration backs away from using the most 
     drastic of trade sanctions to promote human rights in China--
     that is, ending its most favored nation status--one of the 
     compromise plans being most seriously considered is to impose 
     more limited sanctions, directed only against enterprises 
     owned by the state. Those who support this proposal argue 
     that by trading only with enterprises owned and managed by 
     the private sector or involved in joint ventures with foreign 
     capital, we would be encouraging the most progressive sectors 
     in China while at the same time exerting pressure on the 
     Chinese state.
       Most of the objections to this proposal (including those 
     made in The Post's editorial yesterday) have to do with its 
     impracticality and the difficulty of enforcing it. I would 
     suggest there is another, more important problem with the 
     plan; that many of the private enterprises we would be 
     dealing with are responsible for some pretty nasty human 
     rights abuses of their own. For the fact is that the so-
     called ``entrepreneurial sector'' in China contains a huge 
     number of businesses that accord shameful treatment to their 
     employees.
       It is true that some firms in this sector rely for a 
     portion of their work forces on technically trained, 
     sophisticated personnel. And these staff do get pensions and 
     other appropriate protection. But many of these firms, 
     especially those in the rural and suburban areas and the ones 
     developed with Hong Kong capital, depend for the bulk of 
     their labor on near-destitute, under-educated manual workers 
     drawn from poverty-stricken areas of the countryside that are 
     experiencing huge labor surpluses and have severely limited 
     land resources. These workers are treated as a labor reserve, 
     people who ``come when beckoned and leave when dismissed,'' 
     in the words of a Chinese periodical.
       Just as with any migrant labor the world around, these 
     peasant-workers are handed the labor-intensive, dirty forms 
     of work. They receive few or no benefits and have no job 
     security whatever.
       One of the fullest reports on the foreign firms comes from 
     a Chinese scholar who compares capital-labor relations in the 
     foreign-funded firms today to those in the Chinese factories 
     of the early 1950s, before the state benefit and job security 
     system had been put into place. A better comparison for 
     Western readers would be the miserable workplaces of early-
     industrial, mid-19th century England described by Charles 
     Dickens.
       In one representative joint venture, where the partner is 
     from Hong Kong, workers are given two 10-minute rest periods 
     a day, during which more than 200 women must compete for two 
     toilet stalls. Not surprisingly, many cannot contain 
     themselves while waiting at their machines. Other appalling 
     conditions abound in various firms. Sixteen to 18-hour days 
     with no extra pay are often the norm. In some Japanese firms 
     in China, if a worker is late, he or she has to stand outside 
     and suffer humiliation for an hour. (Such practices are also 
     reported in Taiwanese, Korean and Hong Kong firms in China.) 
     Cursing, beating of workers, deductions of their wages and 
     bonuses, and arbitrary firings are not uncommon.
       Chinese journalists writing in a magazine in Guangdong 
     Province revealed that in the entrepreneurial sector 
     (including both foreign-funded and Chinese firms in the rural 
     areas) of the Pearl River Delta--widely acclaimed as China's 
     most ``capitalistic'' region--12- to 18-hour days, seven-day 
     weeks, 20-minute lunches, and a total absence of labor 
     protection, sanitation and injury compensation are the rule--
     all flying in the face of state regulations. There are grim 
     tales of fires, such as one (of many) in a Shenzhen factory 
     in November 1993 in which 84 peasant workers, locked in to 
     prevent theft, were suffocated and burned to death.
       As compared with these ``entrepreneurial'' firms, those in 
     the state sector treat migrant workers with at least a degree 
     of dignity. In the latter, most transients' jobs are 
     guaranteed by three- to five-year contracts, and many other 
     low-cost medical care, some bonuses and subsidies. There are 
     at least minimal sanitary and safety standards observed, and 
     workdays are eight hours, with Sundays off.
       Benefits may be far skimpier for peasants than for the 
     permanent urban regulars in the state firms. But in reports 
     and interviews on treatment of rural migrants, there are no 
     stories of a total lack of benefits, of assaults on workers' 
     dignity and bodies, of poisonous exposures, excessive 
     overtime, embezzled wages, or frisks and searches, as we find 
     repeatedly in press reports on the foreign-funded ventures.
       Why is there this obvious discrepancy? The main thing to 
     keep in mind is that while China is in the midst of a 
     transition away from socialism, this doesn't mean it is going 
     to step directly into the sort of mature capitalism that we 
     in the West tend to associate with a market economy. In those 
     areas where the state is largely absent--as in the 
     ``entrepreneurial sector,'' and especially in those firms 
     subject to the competition of the international market--the 
     transition to welfare state capitalism as we know it does not 
     take place easily or rapidly, just as it did not in the West.
       Instead, what we see is a raw, unadulterated laissez-faire 
     capitalism, made possible in part by the fact that decades of 
     Communist Party rule have undermined the rule of law, given 
     workers little opportunity to organize, and allowed local 
     party officials to rule pretty much as they please.
       Firms in the state sector, however, are at least somewhat 
     affected by the regulatory climate and the tradition of 
     benefits and welfare that have shaped socialist work places 
     for some 40 years. Granted, workers in the state firms also 
     suffer under the authoritarian rule of the party. But the 
     regulations of the state continue to provide some protection 
     for workers--at least until the day when more 
     ``entrepreneurial'' reforms destroy this legacy altogether.

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