[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 68 (Thursday, May 26, 1994)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: May 26, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
           FOCUSSING MFN FOR CHINA ON UNITED STATES INTERESTS

                                 ______


                           HON. DAVID DREIER

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                         Thursday, May 26, 1994

  Mr. DREIER. Mr. Speaker, within the next few days, President Clinton 
is going to make an announcement regarding our Nation's economic and 
political relations with China. Namely, he will decide whether to 
maintain normal trade relations with the most populace country in the 
world, and the third largest economy.
  The China MFN debate has now raged for 5 years. During that time, 
China's economy has roared ahead, placing it squarely in the center of 
the Asian growth region. In addition, the bipolar cold war ended, 
dramatically changing the political and security environment in Asia. 
Finally, there has been a growing recognition here in the United States 
that economic and strategic relations with the countries of Asia and 
the Pacific rim are increasingly critical to our future prosperity and 
security.
  I would like to place in the Record at this point a short essay by 
Amos A. Jordan, president of Pacific Forum CSIS, which touches on the 
different national interests that must be weighed if a sound decision 
is to be made regarding relations with China.
                                                      May 16, 1994

                Framing the China MFN Question Sensibly

       As the June 3 deadline approaches for deciding whether or 
     not China's Most Favored Nation (MFN) trade status should 
     continue, the rancorous debate is increasingly off the point. 
     The matter is being wrongly cast as a choice between our 
     commercial interests and human rights ideals. This not only 
     unnecessarily forces an impossible choice, but also evades 
     the real point.
       The real issue is whether denial of normal trading 
     relations with China (and normality is what MFN amounts to) 
     will advance or weaken vital American interests. Congressman 
     Lee Hamilton rightly identified the relevant key question: 
     will China ``move toward adherence to international norms of 
     behavior--whether the issue is trade, nonproliferation, or 
     human rights--and be a force for stability in East Asia; or 
     become the hegemonic power in East Asia, enforcing its will 
     with military threats and playing a dangerous balance of 
     power game in South Asia, the Persian Gulf, and the Middle 
     East.'' Our policies can influence the choice.
       Of course, United States policy on MFN will not determine 
     China's future, despite continuing illusions of American 
     omnipotence in some quarters--indeed, rather than isolating 
     China by our unilateral actions, there is a greater 
     likelihood we will isolate ourselves. Nevertheless, in the 
     short run at least, China's economic and political prospects 
     will be powerfully influenced by American policy. We need, 
     therefore, to think carefully about the nature of our overall 
     relationship with China as we make the MFN decision. As 
     former Secretary of State Vance and others have said, we 
     cannot let the extraordinarily important and complex 
     Chinese-American relationship be dominated by a single 
     factor.
       Looking at the totality of our interests in China, it is 
     clear that the international security ramifications of our 
     relationship with Beijing are important, perhaps vital; yet 
     these are seldom even mentioned in the hubbub about the 
     supposed economic interest-human rights tradeoff. China is 
     already a major regional actor with increasing power 
     projection capabilities and a military modernization effort 
     that profoundly worries its neighbors. Beijing's cooperation 
     on a number of issues is important such as the North Korean 
     nuclear problem, missile proliferation, nuclear weapons 
     testing, proliferation of chemical, biological and nuclear 
     weapons, etc. Thus, the whole complex U.S.-China 
     relationship--with its global ramifications--needs to be 
     placed on the balance beam, not just our commercial 
     interests, important as those are.
       Revoking China's MFN status will undoubtedly hurt China, 
     for the U.S. is its largest market; it will particularly 
     damage the modernizing elements in Southeast China and Hong 
     Kong that are the leading exporters and the best hope for 
     building a less repressive China. Retaliation by China is 
     certain, with a resultant downward spiral in the overall 
     relationship clearly predictable. In the current era of 
     economic interdependence, the cost to the United States will 
     also be substantial--the World Bank estimates it will cost 
     American consumers about $14 billion a year. Revocation 
     could cost some two hundred thousand U.S. jobs and entail 
     foregoing major opportunities for American trade and 
     investment for years to come.
       We might usefully ask why it is that most Asians take 
     China's side in the matter of human rights. Perhaps it is in 
     part because other nations resent American preaching. As 
     Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew put it in the context of the caning 
     incident, the United States should not be moralizing about 
     human rights in other nations, when American citizens have to 
     cope with ``drugs, violence, unemployment and homelessness'' 
     because Washington will not recognize that the ``government 
     must protect society.'' In part, Asian's may also align 
     themselves with China because they understand the 
     extraordinary challenge of leading a country of 1.2 billion 
     people, of averting unrest by the hundreds of millions of 
     unemployed or underemployed and the additional hundreds of 
     millions that have been hit heavily by the shift to a market 
     economy. Given such a challenge, they may reason, a 
     Jeffersonian approach to governing is likely to produce chaos 
     with spills-over into its neighbors' territories; Tiananmen 
     was indefensible, but not inexplicable.
       As long as China's human rights record remains poor, we can 
     and should continue to press for improvements, preferably in 
     multilateral channels and by diplomatic means. The most 
     promising strategy lies not in sanctions but in broadening 
     China's opening to the West. We have a major stake in not 
     choking that opening and in seeing that China's reforms 
     succeed--in part because, as Senator Baucus has argued, ``the 
     most significant human rights developments in China have come 
     as natural results of economic reform rather than from 
     American pressure.''
       The threat of revocation has resulted in some limited 
     success in the past, but the Chinese now appear ready to call 
     our hand. Since actual revocation serves no one's interests, 
     the time has clearly come for President Clinton to delink MFN 
     from human rights--he can rightly claim that there has been 
     some progress but that the linkage has served its purposes 
     and is now outmoded. Then, he and the nation can turn to the 
     needed fundamental reexamination of the entire US-China 
     relationship and how best to advance the totality of our 
     interests within that relationship.
     Amos A. Jordan.

                          ____________________