[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 63 (Thursday, May 19, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: May 19, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                          MFN STATUS FOR CHINA

  Mr. DANFORTH. Mr. President, I think the comments of the Senator from 
Massachusetts are very important comments. I certainly associate myself 
with the Senator's conclusion. As the Senator pointed out, the 
continued linkage of MFN status for China to human rights conditions 
for China is not now suited to the promotion of human rights or the 
interests of the United States.
  Mr. President, we have had a lengthy debate in our country between 
people who think that it is a good idea and people who do not think it 
is a good idea to link trade policy with various other objectives we 
might have. I have been a Senator who has been very wary, very 
skeptical of attempts to condition trade relations on other objectives. 
This issue has been hotly contested in the Senate.
  But I would say, as somebody who has been skeptical about such 
attempts, that I recognize that those who do want to get some handle on 
human rights within China are representing the finest traditions of the 
United States. I do not think it is a good strategy to use, but I 
recognize what they are trying to do, and I compliment them because who 
can turn a blind eye to human rights abuses in other parts of the 
world. It is very characteristic of American principles to try to do 
something about China and about human rights.
  As the Senator from Massachusetts has just pointed out, the fact is 
that continued linkage will not serve the purpose of human rights in 
China. There is no reasonable likelihood that to continue such linkage 
would do anything other than make matters worse within China. It would 
clearly be contrary to the commercial interests of the United States, 
to job opportunities in the United States. In short, it simply would 
not work.
  At a time when the most significant foreign policy challenge we face 
in the world is nuclear proliferation in North Korea, clearly the 
cooperation of China is very important to the world order as well as to 
the interests of the United States.
  So I do compliment Senator Kerry for his comments. I believe they are 
very important. I am concerned, Mr. President, that the typical 
political approach right now to try to resolve the conundrum we are in 
with respect to MFN for China is that the administration will somehow 
try to compromise the issue, to cut the baby in half, to maintain some 
kind of partial linkage of MFN and human rights or, as Senator Kerry 
pointed out--and really I think one of the few points where I disagreed 
with his comments--some sort of code of conduct for American businesses 
that are doing business in China.
  It is the view of this Senator that that would be a mistake; that the 
efforts to have a partial MFN linkage or impose partial trade sanctions 
against China, or the efforts to have a code of conduct for American 
businesses, would get us basically in the same soup we are in right 
now.
  So I would urge the administration not to do that, and to take the 
very simple position that continued linkage of MFN and human rights is 
not in the best interests of the United States. Continued linkage is 
not in the best interests of human rights in the People's Republic of 
China, and it is not in the best interests of maintaining peace in the 
world.
  Mr. JOHNSTON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be 
allowed to proceed for 8 minutes under the time of Senator Bradley. I 
believe that was the arrangement.
  The PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The Senator from Louisiana [Mr. Johnston] is recognized for 8 
minutes.
  Mr. JOHNSTON. Mr. President, I wish to associate myself with the 
remarks of the distinguished Senator from Missouri as well as the 
outstanding statement of the Senator from Massachusetts [Mr. Kerry] on 
China and MFN. I believe their statements were totally persuasive, 
totally correct, and in the very primary interest of this country.
  The question, I believe, as the Senator from Missouri told us, is 
really not whether we would deny MFN altogether to China. I think that 
would be an act of such abject foolishness that this country would 
really not consider that, notwithstanding the fact that calls for that 
come occasionally from Members of the Congress. That really is not the 
question.
  The question is whether we will take some half-step, some cutting of 
the baby in two, as the Senator from Missouri calls it, something like, 
for example, an embargo on goods made by the Chinese military, an 
increase of the tariff from 8 to 10 percent, or some half-action that 
would be designed politically to please both sides in this conflict.
  I very strongly urge the administration not to take what I believe 
would be a very foolish action because it is not likely to achieve any 
of the results that those who seek it would have it do. There is no 
paradigm for these half-actions, an increase in tariff related to one 
country. There is no paradigm for a partial embargo on items such as 
goods made by the military. It would not be possible to have a partial 
embargo on goods made by the military or goods made by the Government 
because, in China in this period of transition, determining what is 
made purely by private enterprise versus the Government is very 
difficult to discern.
  If we took one of these half-actions, it would call for an annual 
review. I think even this year, if we had an annual review of MFN and 
graded, in effect, the actions of a prideful and sovereign foreign 
country, it would not likely affect the question of what would China's 
reaction likely be to one of these partial actions.
  When you talk about MFN, I believe there are three operative words or 
phrases--pride, stability, and the law of unintended consequences.
  We should not underestimate the role that pride plays in this whole 
scenario with China. Those who know history--and I know the present 
occupant of the chair is without peer in his knowledge of history--will 
know that China is one of the oldest civilizations in the world, one of 
the most developed civilizations in the world. Indeed, the Chinese now 
and always have called their country the ``middle kingdom,'' the 
center, in effect, of the world. They have always considered it such. 
Yet in late centuries China has been the subject of great abuse. The 
opium wars in the late 1830's and the early 1840's were wars caused by 
the British policy of insisting that they send opium and open the opium 
markets in China.
  If there was ever a case of abuse of a country by a foreign power, 
the opium wars and the policy that begat that war show it. This is a 
country that has been subjected to gunboat diplomacy, that has been 
occupied three times in the last 150 years. That caused Mao Tse-tung on 
October 1, 1949, when he finally took over, to say with great resonance 
around the country, ``The Chinese people have stood up. They will never 
again be humiliated.''
  Mr. President, those words and the pride that they bespeak of the 
Chinese people and the Chinese leadership should not be lost on our 
foreign policymakers, because the Chinese will not be pushed around, 
Mr. President. They will not have the United States try to impose its 
value systems, its culture upon them, right or wrong. Their history, 
their culture, their feelings, their innermost feelings, dictate this. 
If ever we undertook some kind of action against the Chinese, surely 
they would retaliate, and surely retaliation is easy to do. They can 
retaliate on fertilizers where we have a tremendous market--and I might 
say from my State we ship a lot of fertilizer--in agricultural 
products, in commercial aircraft, telecommunications, energy, 
particularly energy efficiency. Mr. President, they can retaliate very 
easily just in the trade market.
  I agree with my friend from Massachusetts when he says this should 
not be dollars and cents where you in effect worry about American jobs 
for human rights. That is not the tradeoff. But that is part of the 
equation.
  The effect of denying of MFN, by some estimates, would result in the 
loss of 10 million jobs in China if it were a total revocation. What it 
would do to our relationship with North Korea, where the Chinese have 
been our strong ally, no one can say. It is clear that it would not 
have a salutary effect on that relationship. And, more to the point, 
Mr. President, what would be the reaction of the People's Liberation 
Army, which is one of the most conservative groups in China?
  China has its doves and its hawks just as we do, and the People's 
Liberation Army constitute the hawks, constitute what we would call the 
conservatives, constitute those who say that China has done too much to 
placate America, saying that China has done too much in terms of being 
humiliated by the United States. The PLA, and what they represent, 
desiring a larger proportion of the budget of China, could very well 
spark a new cold war where they build up and we have to build up in 
reaction to that.
  Finally, Mr. President, there is the question of stability. China is 
the most dynamic, growing country in the world, the largest country in 
the world, of 1.2 billion people. It had a growth rate last year of 13 
percent real. It has had a growth rate of over 7 percent for decades 
and decades.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be allowed to proceed 
under the time of Senator Bradley for an additional 5 minutes.
  The PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so ordered. The 
Senator is recognized for 5 additional minutes.
  Mr. JOHNSTON. Mr. President, this growth, this transition from a 
total command economy to a capitalist economy, a free-market economy, 
leads to tremendous instabilities in China, vast differences in wealth, 
tremendous unemployment as formerly Government owned and run 
enterprises are forced into the free enterprise system.
  Mr. President, it is an unstable country. Deng Xiaopeng, its leader, 
is reputed to be in very ill health, aged 90. They do not have a model 
for transition, a constitutional system as we do, where someone 
peacefully and automatically succeeds. There is likely to be, or there 
could very well be, a power struggle. The Chinese see stability as an 
order of first priority in that country, stability before even 
prosperity--stability even before prosperity, Mr. President. So they 
are not going to install a democratic system in a country that has no 
background, no understanding, no culture, no history of democracy. They 
ought to do it, but they are not, Mr. President. That is not the way 
they see their own interests.

  They look at Russia, which installed democracy first before free 
enterprise, and they see a model that they do not wish to imitate or 
emulate. They look at Taiwan and South Korea, which first put in free 
enterprise, and both of those countries used to be very much 
authoritarian countries. They were our allies, and we did not talk 
about MFN with Taiwan or South Korea. But their human rights record was 
no better than China's. We stuck with them because they were our allies 
in the cold war.
  China can look at Taiwan and South Korea and see in both cases very 
prosperous countries, which now have some of the leading democracies in 
the world, which have democratic practices that even the United States 
does not criticize.
  So here is China in a period of instability, in a period of 
transition from command economy to free enterprise economy, in a period 
of transition from Deng Xiaoping to who knows what, very concerned 
about their stability, who looks at these models of Russia, Taiwan, and 
South Korea, and the Chinese say to me, ``Do you really think we should 
do what the Russians are doing rather than what the South Koreans and 
Taiwanese have done?''
  It is a compelling case, Mr. President. Whether it is logical or 
proper, it is what they believe. They are motivated by concerns about 
pride and stability.
  Mr. President, finally, I want to speak about the law of unintended 
consequences. The intentions of all who promote the connection between 
human rights and MFN are the very best and the very finest of emotions, 
just as our entry into the Vietnam war was caused by the very finest of 
emotions--a desire to help people, to promote democracy and freedom.
  But just as in Vietnam, unintended consequences happen. So in MFN for 
China, unintended consequences can very well arise-- tit for tat, 
retaliation here, and before you know it, Mr. President, it is not too 
much to say that the whole of Asia could be destabilized, and that a 
new cold war could actually begin over trade and MFN.
  Mr. President, I trust this country will not be foolish enough to do 
that.
  One final point: Is there progress? In some ways, there has been a 
very disappointing lack of progress in China. In other ways, the 
progress for human rights has been leaping forward by light years.
  Mr. President, there are now 150 million people in China who are free 
to seek jobs, to be employed, to make their own deal with employers; 
whereas, just a few years ago, they were all under a controlled 
economy. I believe there is evidence of progress, and I believe we 
should delink MFN and human rights.
  Mr. MURKOWSKI addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Alaska [Mr. Murkowski] is 
recognized.

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