Questions about sanctions

...on the other side is an even more diverse bipartisan coalition, including many of us who supported Clinton in his original policy of linking trade policy to human rights...

...So it seems reasonable to ask for an explanation from those who argue that sanctions will be ineffective in persuading the very same government to change its policy on, say, torture...

...Instead, the United States would pursue a strategy Clinton called "comprehensive engagement...

...This makes it possible to avoid case-by-case analysis of whether a serious threat of sanctions might help to end particularly egregious human rights abuses—or of whether some practices are so loathsome that it is immoral to continue business relationships with those who engage in them, even if terminating the relationship will not stop the practices...

...trade relations would be driven by human rights policy, not vice versa...

...Chris Smith, a Republican from the 4th district of New Jersey, is chairman of the House Subcommittee on International Operations and Human Rights...

...There is money to be made by foreign businesses, but only under strict government control and usually in partnership with government-owned entities...

...or perhaps the administration and its supporters would agree that economic sanctions can work to modify Beijing's behavior, but only if they are held in reserve for occasional use on particularly urgent issues...

...Gen-dun Choekyi Nyima was six years old at the time he was recognized as the eleventh Panchen Lama, and at the time of his arrest...

...The remaining questions ask themselves: 3) Are sanctions appropriate, for instance, against a government that has sentenced Wei Jing-sheng, Wang Dan, and hundreds of others to long prison terms for the crime of expressing political opinions...

...We in the human rights coalition should begin by asking our counterparts two questions: 1) Do you believe that economic sanctions (and similar measures such as denying visas to foreign government officials) should never be used to deter, punish, or protest unacceptable non-economic conduct by other governments...

...This is also the nearly unanimous position of the career bureaucracy at the State Department, whose institutional culture strongly prefers agreement to disagreement...

...Many Americans believed him, but the Chinese dictators never did...

...on a visit to China in early 1994, I reminded Chinese officials of Clinton's ultimatum that most-favored-nation status would be denied unless China showed "substantial progress" in a number of areas, including the release of political prisoners and the elimination of such practices as slave labor and torture...

...Foreign businessmen made money in Nazi Germany in the 1930s, but they usually had the good taste not to argue that human rights were just around the corner...

...Perhaps such an explanation exists...

...9) Are they justified by an entrenched military that remains unrepentant for the killing of hundreds of peaceful demonstrators eight years ago and whose top general recently announced on a tour of the United States that "nobody died at Tiananmen...

...Far from encouraging the development of a free-enterprise system, in other words, the Chinese government seems to be engineering a far more natural transition from communism to a system that bears a remarkable resemblance to fascism...

...This policy (since renamed "strategic engagement") consists primarily in trying to have a diplomatic and economic relationship with Beijing that is as similar as possible to those we have with governments that do not kill, torture, and imprison innocent people...

...The ensuing debate in Congress and elsewhere has mostly been not about the morality of this policy—or even about how it differs from coddling dictators—but about whether it works...

...After all, whatever else the people who run the Chinese government may be, they are not stupid...

...7) What of the routine use of torture—including but not limited to electric cattle prods—on political and religious prisoners...

...8) Are sanctions justified by a population-control program that not only requires women to have abortions if they become pregnant with an illegal child, but sees to it that those who refuse are often dragged physically to the abortion centers...

...Even after a detailed discussion of these things that the Chinese government does to its people, some will argue that trade is still the surest route to human rights because a free economy will inevitably lead to a "demand" for other freedoms...

...on one side are the Clinton Democrats, Kissinger Republicans, and business lobbyists who argue that "isolating" Beijing would make the regime angry and thus make things even worse for the very people we wish to protect...

...Perhaps this is the fundamental basis of the disagreement on China policy: Some think the men who rule China are more like businessmen, and others think they are more like Nazis...

...It appears that they also work—or at least work better than the alternative, which is neither to impose nor threaten sanctions—in persuading the Beijing government to change its policies on videocassettes and computer software...

...This suggests the basis for a useful dialogue on China policy...

...Perhaps Beijing is simply more attached to torture than to software piracy...

...4) What about a government that orchestrates the arrest and disappearance of a six-year-old boy...

...The value they attach to the United States as a market for their expanding economy is apparently great enough to outweigh whatever reluctance they may have to lose face by publicly yielding to the threat of sanctions when it comes to software piracy...

...But this is at least a disagreement we can try to resolve by discussing the facts...

...We argue that it is time to admit that engagement with Beijing is an experiment that has failed...

...Indeed, the breadth of the term "human rights violations," along with the frequency with which some of us in Congress have found it necessary to invoke the term when discussing China, may have helped to lull the strategic-engagers into viewing such violations as mere abstractions...

...In theory, this relationship should give us frequent opportunities to remind Beijing firmly and politely that it should discontinue these practices...

...once we have the answers to these questions, the debate will be focused where it ought to be: on the application of agreed principles to what is really happening in China...

...6) Are they justified by the similar persecution of many thousands of Protestant "house church" members, Tibetan Buddhists, and Muslims in Xinjiang and elsewhere...

...They told me they were not worried: Clinton would back down...

...2) If not, exactly what sorts of conduct would justify the imposition of sanctions...

...5) Are sanctions justified by the recent announcement of a systematic attempt to eradicate the Roman Catholic church by imprisoning priests, bishops, and lay people who refuse to renounce the pope and swear allegiance to the "Catholic Patriotic Association" run by the government...

...The biggest problem with this argument—aside from the Chinese military's previous responses to such demands at Tiananmen and elsewhere—is that what is emerging in China is not a free economy...

...Now he is seven, assuming he is still alive...

...Nor can we help but notice that when the strategic-engagement faction decides something is really important—most notably the effort to get China to respect international copyrights—it quickly resorts to the very trade sanctions that same faction declines to use as a weapon in the struggle for human rights...

...Since 1994 there has been regression, not progress, on every single important human-rights question: There are more political prisoners, more summary executions, a more brutal regime in Tibet, tighter controls on political and religious expression...

...Almost everyone now agrees that economic sanctions played an important role in bringing about an end to apartheid in South Africa...

...In this view, the very multiplicity of human rights violations in China could be seen as an argument against the effectiveness of sanctions...

...A few months later, Clinton announced that MFN would be "de-linked" from human rights...

...Such a discussion can surely improve a foreign policy that treats torture as an abstraction and only software as worth fighting for...

...Indeed, one of the few areas in which both parties and all factions agree is that sanctions were appropriate and effective in the matter of Chinese video and software piracy...