[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (2000, Book I)]
[March 1, 2000]
[Pages 345-350]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks to UUNET and MCI WorldCom Employees in Ashburn, Virginia
March 1, 2000

    Thank you very much, Melissa. To 
Bernie and John 
and Mark, thank you for welcoming me and 
Ambassador Barshefsky and our whole team 
here. I leaned over to John when I looked at all of you out here, and I 
said, ``Now, I can't believe all these people are off work now. What 
terrible thing can happen?'' [Laughter] What could I be responsible for 
doing to the Internet today? [Laughter]
    I am profoundly honored to be here, and I thank all of you for 
allowing me to come. I came here to talk about your future. But because 
this is the only opportunity I'll have today to speak, through you and 
the media, to the American people, I have to make a brief comment about 
one other issue.
    Today there was another terrible shooting in the Wilkinsburg 
community in Allegheny County in western Pennsylvania. We don't know all 
the facts yet, but it was a bad situation. Yesterday, of course, that 
tragedy occurred in Michigan, where a very young child was killed by another very young child. I just talked 
to the superintendent of schools there, right 
before I came out.
    I want to say two things about it to all of you. First of all, these 
are personal tragedies that, because of instantaneous media coverage,

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we all know and feel. And we owe the families of the victims and the 
communities our prayers and our best wishes.
    Secondly, as citizens, these incidents, particularly the one 
yesterday in Michigan, call on us to recognize the fact that we simply 
haven't done everything we can do to keep guns away from criminals and 
children. And so today I have to say again to Congress: You have had 
legislation now that would require child safety locks, would close the 
gun show loophole, would take other steps to keep guns out of the wrong 
hands for well over 6 months. You're supposed to take a recess next 
week. Before you take the recess, please send me this legislation. It 
will help keep America safer.
    Now, I want to talk to you today about your future, which is 
unfolding at a breathtaking rate. We were talking before we came out. I 
said, ``Tell me a little about the growth.'' So John said, ``Well, 5 
years ago we had 40 employees. Today, we have 8,000.'' Bernie said, 
``Five years ago, we had 2,000 employees. Today, we have 88,000.'' 
You're getting along reasonably well. [Laughter]
    I have been going around the country saying to my fellow Americans 
everywhere that in a new economy in which we have now, in the last 7 
years, 21 million new jobs, the lowest unemployment and welfare rolls in 
30 years, the lowest poverty rates in 20 years, the lowest female 
unemployment rate in 40 years, the lowest African-American and Hispanic 
unemployment rates ever recorded, the highest homeownership on record, 
and the longest economic expansion in our history, the world is changing 
so fast, if you want to keep doing well, you have to keep trying to do 
better; that it is very important that all of us understand that we'll 
never get anywhere by standing still. Although given the pace at which 
you're growing, I'm glad I'm giving you the chance to stand still for a 
little bit today. [Laughter]
    This shift in our economy is changing the landscape of our country, 
both symbolically and literally. I first saw the landscape of northern 
Virginia as a freshman in college 36 years ago. But it looks different 
than it did when I became President 7 years ago. Everywhere you look, 
there's a brandnew facility. This place is truly amazing. And beneath 
all the booming business parks and green pastures, there are countless 
miles of cable, conducting more than over half the Internet traffic in 
the entire world.
    There are more high-tech firms in northern Virginia today than there 
were farms in 1970, when the region led the State in the production of 
milk. [Laughter] Here in Loudoun County, there are more high-tech 
workers than there were residents in 1980. It has been an amazing thing. 
Workers like you and firms like UUNET are the new engines driving our 
economy. You represent about 8 percent of our employment but 30 percent 
of our growth over the last decade, something you can be very proud of.
    The new technologies that you use are also finding their ways into 
every sector of our economy, making companies of all kinds more 
competitive. UUNET provides a lot more than Internet service. Every day 
you show us something about the power of ideas, the power of 
imagination, the power of enterprise, values that are at the core of 
America's character and at the bottom of this booming new globalized 
economy, in a marketplace that is much, much wider and fuller of 
possibility than any of us could have imagined when this company sold 
its first commercial connection in 1988.
    In just 12 years, you've extended your reach to 100 countries, 
expanding your global network by more than 1,000 percent a year. The 
global network is a big part of your future, and that's what I want to 
talk about today, and what Government's role in that is.
    People ask me all the time, well, this is the highest percentage of 
growth in jobs in the private sector and the smallest percentage in the 
Government of any recovery we've ever had, since we could measure such 
things. As a matter of fact, since I've been President, we've reduced 
the size of Government to its smallest point in 40 years, since 1960. So 
people say, ``Well, what is your job, Mr. President? What is the 
Congress' job?'' I think our job is to create the conditions and provide 
the tools for you to do your job.
    What does that mean? That means we ought to invest in education and 
training and new technologies. There's a lot of research that can't 
efficiently and economically be done in the private sector. The Internet 
originally grew out of Government-funded research, which, as I was 
reminded today by your leaders, is one of the reasons there are so many 
high-tech firms in northern Virginia.
    Second, we've got to give you an overall healthy economy, which is 
why we had to get rid of the deficits and start running surpluses

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and why we ought to pay this country out of debt, keep interest rates 
down, and make capital available for other companies to grow as well.
    The third thing we ought to do is to promote genuine competition. 
That was behind the gentle nudge that Bernie gave me about the Baby Bell comment. [Laughter] He was--
actually, it was a little inside joke, but he was referring, in a 
supportive way, to the fact that the Vice President and I fought hard in 
the Telecommunications Act, when we rewrote the telecommunications bill 
for a procompetitive position. And because we fought hard, we got it. 
And you not only have companies like yours that have swollen in size in 
the last 5 years; there are hundreds and hundreds of companies that 
didn't even exist 5 years ago that are able to make it today because the 
United States took a procompetitive position in the Telecommunications 
Act. Those are our jobs. That's what we're supposed to do.
    But finally, we are a country with 22 percent of the world's income 
and 4 percent of the world's population. And you don't have to be 
Einstein or even particularly good with a computer to know that if 
you've got 22 percent of the world's income and 4 percent of the world's 
population and you would like to keep doing better, you have to sell 
something to somebody else--[laughter]--and that in a world that is 
increasingly globalized, you're better off when they're better off. It's 
not good for you that African countries which are capable of growing at 
7, 8, 10 percent a year are so burdened by debt that they can't educate 
their children or provide health care to their people. It's not good for 
you if, because we refuse to open our markets to some countries in the 
Caribbean or Latin America, they don't open their markets to ours, and 
they grow more slowly, and their people remain poorer. You'd be better 
off if they get richer and more of them will be on the Internet.
    We live in a time when, really, doing the morally right thing 
happens to be good economics. But in order to do it--again I would say, 
you will do a lot of it. I've seen enterprising kids in poor African 
villages logging onto the Internet and finally seeing a map that's up to 
date and learning geography and doing all kinds of things. People will 
take care of this if we establish the right conditions and provide the 
tools.
    One of the things that we have worked hard on is to expand trade. 
Under Ambassador Barshefsky and her 
predecessor, we completed over 270 trade agreements. But in many ways, 
perhaps the most important of all is the agreement that--or the decision 
Congress will have to make this year and in the next few months on 
whether to let China come into the World Trade Organization by giving 
them permanent normal trading relations status with the United States.
    If you've been following this debate at all, you know there is a lot 
of controversy about this in the Congress. And I won't go through all 
the arguments now, but let me just tell you, I can say this from my 
heart; you know, I'm not running for anything this year. [Laughter] And 
most days it's okay with me, but I'm not--[laughter]--most days.
    But I care a lot about what this country will be like when the young 
people here in this audience are my age, when your children are your 
age. This is a profoundly important issue. It is, in the short term, the 
kind of decision that every country would wish for. Once in a generation 
you get a chance to open a market with over a billion consumers, the 
biggest potential market in the world.
    Let me explain, first of all, what this agreement does. In return 
for China's entry as a full partner in the World Trade Organization, the 
United States would gain unprecedented access to China's markets. Today, 
with the Chinese, we have our second biggest trade deficit, tens of 
billions of dollars, because our markets are open to their products--and 
they should be, because we'll be better off if they do better. But their 
markets are not very open to our products and services. Under this 
agreement, Chinese tariffs in every sector, from telecommunications to 
automobiles to agriculture, will fall by half or more in 5 years. For 
the first time, our companies will be able to sell and distribute 
products in China made by workers here at home without transferring 
technology in manufacturing--never happened before. For the first time, 
China will agree to play by the same open trading rules we do--never 
happened before.
    Meanwhile, we'll get two tough new safeguards against surges of 
imports which would threaten to throw a lot of Americans out of work in 
a short time under unfair trade practices. So these are the kinds of 
changes any

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President, regardless of party, would welcome, because Presidents, 
regardless of party, have worked to bring out these changes for more 
than 30 years now.
    This is a good deal for American workers, for American farmers, for 
American business. It's a good deal for America. But the only way we can 
get this agreement is for Congress to give China permanent normal 
trading relations. This is one of the most important votes Congress will 
pass in this year and for many years to come. Next month, our Commerce 
Secretary, Bill Daley, and our Agriculture 
Secretary, Dan Glickman, are going on missions 
to China with dozens of Members of Congress to meet with people in 
Government and business and religious leaders who are interested in 
change in China.
    It's very interesting to me that the more people go to China and 
spend time there, no matter what they do for a living or what their 
perspective is, the more likely they are to favor our bringing China 
into the world system of rule-based trade, because this is about 
economics and more than economics, and I want to say more about that in 
a minute.
    But just think about the economics of high-tech companies. Today, 
China's tariffs on information technology products average 13 percent. 
When China joins the WTO, those tariffs will start to fall and be 
eliminated by 2005. China will open its Internet and its telecom markets 
to American investment and services for the first time. That's a huge 
deal.
    Now, the magnitude of all this almost defies measurement. The number 
of Chinese Internet users--let's just take that--quadrupled in the last 
year alone, from 2 million to 9 million. This year, the number will 
exceed 20 million. And you know what the internal dynamics of this 
technology are. You know how much your company has grown. Now, project 
that rate of growth onto a country that has over 1.2 billion people. And 
keep in mind, the United States is not being asked to do anything to get 
this agreement, except to treat them like a normal trading partner on a 
permanent basis and bring them into the WTO.
    So what are we going to do? China doesn't have the information 
infrastructure to support 500 million Internet users yet. But UUNET 
already has a presence in Hong Kong. You could help them to build it.
    Let's look at what happens if we didn't do it. Today, we've got a 
huge advantage in high-tech trade internationally. What would happen if 
we didn't take advantage of this? China will grow anyway, and someone 
else, not you, will reap the benefits of it. So if we turn our backs on 
this opportunity, we will be unilaterally disarming in perhaps the most 
vital area of our future economic growth.
    And let me say, finally, this is about more than money. I saw a lot 
of you nodding when I said it was good morally and good economics to 
help lift the burden of debt from the poorest African countries if 
they're working to try to do better. I saw a lot of you nodding when I 
said it was the right thing to do to buy more from the Caribbean and 
Latin American countries if they were doing the right thing and opening 
their markets to us.
    We have a decision to make here. The people who don't want to do 
this by and large think that China should not be taken into the World 
Trade Organization because we don't agree with all their political 
decisions. We don't like it when they repress human rights or political 
rights or religious expression. We don't agree with them that we should 
take little or no account of environmental impacts of economic decisions 
or that we shouldn't take strong steps to eliminate child labor and 
slave labor and things like that. We have differences.
    But think of this. You know how much the Internet has changed 
America, and we were already an open society. I can look out in this 
crowd and tell that many of you come from some place else. You know how 
much the Internet is changing where you came from and how much it could 
change if it were there. The same thing is true in China.
    Everything I have learned about human nature in my life plus 
everything I have learned about China as President convinces me that 
we're a lot better off bringing them into the family of nations, into 
this common endeavor, than shutting them out. Do we know what China will 
be like in 20 years? Of course we don't. We can't control what they do. 
All we can control is what we do. But here again, I think our values 
will be advanced, along with our economic interests, if we give people a 
chance to be good partners. If you don't give them a chance, it's almost 
certain that they will react in a negative way.

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    So I ask all of you to think about this, because normally, Americans 
don't think about foreign policy much. But you know that with every 
passing day in a globalized economy, there is no longer a clear, bright 
line between an issue which is a domestic political issue and an issue 
which is a foreign policy issue.
    With every passing day, these issues grow closer together. Do I like 
it when people's religious liberty is oppressed in China? No, I don't. 
But it's very interesting; most of the evangelicals I know who have 
missions in China want China in the WTO because they know that that will 
make it more likely that there will be more freedom of expression, more 
contact with the outside world, and a bigger stake in working with other 
countries.
    This is about money, yes, but it's about more than money. It's about 
whether we can create a world where there's the kind of harmony across 
race and ethnicity and religion that there must be in this workplace 
that I can see just by looking around the room here. Wouldn't you like 
it if the world worked the way you do here? How could it be bad if 
companies like UUNET are able to make the tools of communications 
cheaper and better and more widely available to more Chinese people? It 
has to be good.

    So I will say to you, I don't agree with everything the Chinese do. 
I'm sure they don't agree with everything I do. [Laughter] And far be it 
for me to equate the two disagreements. [Laughter] I don't believe--in 
all seriousness, I don't believe it's right to crack down on people for 
their religious views or their political expression or because they want 
to be in an association like the Falun Gong. I don't think that's right. 
But I don't believe that we will have more influence on China by giving 
them the back of our hand instead of giving them a chance to build a 
different future.

    That's what this is about. And I want every one of you to think 
about this. Look, economically, this is a no-brainer. It's in your 
interest. It will make this company a lot more jobs. But I don't ask you 
as citizens to check your values at the door. Every one of us believes 
in some things that money can't buy.

    But I'm telling you, you just think about what you have learned in 
your life about human nature. The leaders of China are not foolish 
people; they're intelligent people. They know, if they open these 
markets, they know, if you go in there and everybody gets connected to 
the Internet, that change is coming more rapidly in ways that you cannot 
control. And people will be able to define their future, independent of 
the Government's ability to control it, more than ever before, whether 
you're talking about religion or politics or personal life choices or 
anything else. They know that, and they have made this decision. And we 
cannot let our disagreements with Government policy get in the way of 
our interest in a long-term partnership with the most populous country 
on Earth. So again I say, what is good economics is also consistent with 
our values.

    The late Chief Justice Earl Warren once said that, ``Liberty is the 
most contagious force in the world.'' I believe the Internet inevitably 
is an instrument of human liberty, and it will be in China as well, if 
we continue to reach out to people.

    So I'm asking you to do something if you agree with this. I want you 
to tell the Members of Congress, without regard to party, that represent 
your State--if you live here, if you live in Maryland, you live in West 
Virginia--I want you to ask them to support this. And I want you to tell 
them--I want you to tell them that you will stay with them on this 
decision if they do, because this is very, very important.

    You know, I'm grateful that since I've been President, America has 
done well. I'm grateful for the chance I've had to make a contribution 
to it. But frankly, I'm much more interested in whether America 
continues to do well long after my tenure in office. And again I say to 
you, if you know in your business that--if you want to keep doing well, 
you always have to keep trying to do better and looking to the future, 
anticipating the changes, imagining how you want it to be.

    I can't imagine a world that I want for my child and my 
grandchildren that doesn't include partnerships that are constructive 
with the big countries of the world, which promote human liberty as well 
as economic progress. That's what this whole thing is about.

    So I say to you, I came here today because you are the symbol of 
21st century America. You are the embodiment of what I want for the 
future. And because of what you do for a living every day, because of 
how you see and

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feel the way the world is changing and how you see what it can become, 
you are in a position, that most of your fellow Americans are not in, to 
understand the importance of this. So again I say to you, you're doing 
great. I want you to do better. And I think we can do better and do 
good, but we have to start this year by making sure that we don't turn 
away from this profoundly important opportunity.

    Thank you very much.

Note: The President spoke at 3:15 p.m. at UUNET Technologies. In his 
remarks, he referred to Melissa Pizzo, vice president and general 
manager, service delivery organization, John Sidgmore, chairman, and 
Mark Spagnolo, president and chief executive officer, UUNET; Bernard J. 
Ebbers, president and chief executive officer, MCI WorldCom, Inc.; Kayla 
Rolland, who died after she was shot by 6-year-old classmate Dedrick 
Owens in Mount Morris Township, MI; Larry J. Allen, superintendent, 
Mount Morris School District; and former U.S. Trade Representative 
Michael (Mickey) Kantor.