Permanent Normal Appeasement
Permanent Normal Appeasement This week the Senate will vote on granting China permanent most-favored-nation trade status. The vote comes a lot later than the Clinton administration and China's...
...in the late 1970s, Scoop Jackson had the inconvenient habit of making everybody uncomfortable, too...
...Robert Kagan, for the Editors...
...None of these "untoward events" will have any effect on the thinking of Senator Baucus and his like-minded colleagues, of course...
...Lott now says the Thompson measure is "right on the substance" and he would vote for it...
...The Senate is on autopilot...
...It's not a question of if...
...There has, in fact, been no shortage of outrages already...
...Lott, Baucus, and company will have to figure out what to do about Senator Fred Thompson's amendment...
...The third, a 60-year-old woman, appeared to have been beaten to death...
...Protestant and Catholic groups not registered with the central authorities have suffered severe harassment, including "threats, demolition of unregistered property, extortion of 'fines,' interrogation, detention, and at times beatings and torture...
...You know, something "untoward" like a Chinese attack on Taiwan, or some particularly brutal crackdown on political or religious groups...
...Being inconvenient can be a lonely occupation...
...It first has to complete negotiations with the other member states, negotiations that may drag on for months...
...Senators in both parties have been putting the squeeze on Thompson, trying to get him to back off and introduce his measure as a vacuous "sense of the Congress" resolution...
...We hope Thompson will hold steady on his course...
...Too close to the elections, you see, and therefore too likely to be infected by election-year "politics," i.e., the actual views of the American people...
...Then Beijing must reach agreement with the WTO on implementation of its trade pacts...
...The Vatican recently reported the arrest of an auxiliary bishop as part of a general crackdown on Catholics in central China...
...Baucus and others say that if Congress fails to act this year, American companies won't benefit from the lower tariffs that will come with China's entry into the WTO...
...The vote comes a lot later than the Clinton administration and China's friends in the Senate wanted...
...This is hardly a controversial proposal: Does anyone think it shouldn't be American policy to punish China for such violations...
...Let's be honest...
...Nevertheless, the China lobby has raised a ruckus...
...Now the legislation targets other countries as well as China and, more significantly, gives the president a lot of flexibility to impose sanctions or not as he sees fit...
...China's backers in the Senate insist that would be a catastrophe, and not only because it would annoy Beijing...
...But Falun Gong members are not the only victims of religious repression...
...All deliberation on this matter has ceased...
...Even if China invaded Taiwan tomorrow, they would no doubt still argue the benefits of trading with Beijing...
...If it comes up for a vote, it might just pass...
...And that's precisely why Baucus and others are trying to derail Thompson's measure...
...But there is no guarantee that Clinton, or Al Gore, or for that matter George W. Bush will hold out against Chinese pressure when the time comes to take care of Taiwan's membership later this year or next...
...End of story...
...Probably a number of other Republicans would, too, and so would many Democrats...
...Chamber of Commerce and its servants in the Senate don't want to wait is the reason Baucus put forth in July: They're worried about those "untoward events...
...In poll after poll, Americans express keen distrust of China and skepticism about the benefits of extending permanent normal trade relations...
...Those who raise concerns about giving China a free pass have been squashed...
...The longer they wait, the greater the chance that the Chinese government will do something horrible that might imperil passage of the trade bill...
...So American companies won't lose a blessed dollar if Congress waits until next year to complete work on the trade bill...
...The State Department reports that the "unremitting nationwide campaigns against 'cults' and superstition" have also had a predictable "spillover effect on other faiths...
...This is nonsense...
...If the Senate bill is amended, the trade measure must go back to the House for another vote...
...China insists that Taiwan can enter only as a part of China...
...Final passage would have to wait until—gasp!—next year...
...For months Thompson has been pushing a measure that would punish China with sanctions if it were found to be in violation of international nuclear nonpro-liferation agreements...
...Jesse Helms and Paul Well-stone, for instance, offered an amendment to the trade bill requiring the president to certify whether or not there is religious freedom in China...
...Neither party wants to look soft on nuclear proliferation in an election year...
...This was very inconvenient, coming as it did at the same time as the State Department's damning report, so the amendment was defeated, 69-28...
...So what...
...It's a question of when...
...The real reason the U.S...
...When it comes to dealing with China, there's not much guts or integrity left in either party...
...Probably China won't be able to join the WTO until the end of this year, at the earliest...
...Supporters of permanent trade status for China fear there might not be enough time left to complete work on the legislation before Congress leaves town this year...
...Corporate America wants to make money in China, and senators in both parties want money from corporate America...
...Indeed, in recent days alone, three Falun Gong members, two of them elderly, have died after being arrested by the police...
...A majority of senators in both parties, in other words, wanted to get this vote out of the way before the next, entirely inevitable, Chinese outrage...
...The fix is in...
...China still has several hurdles to clear before it can join the trade organization...
...One mysteriously "fell" from a fourth-floor window...
...Well, almost all...
...This dilution of Thompson's proposal is unfortunate, but at least it has won broader support among Thompson's colleagues...
...That will take time, too...
...Senate majority leader Trent Lott says he intends to get the bill through no matter what...
...There was also the fear, expressed in mid-July by China's leading Senate defender, Max Baucus, that "the more the issue is delayed, the more likely it is that some untoward . . . event might occur that would deteriorate relations between our two countries...
...One died of apparent suffocation in prison...
...This past week the State Department reported that the Chinese government's treatment of religious groups had "deteriorated markedly" over the past year...
...Last week, too, the Beijing government stepped up its pressure on Taiwan, once again hinting of armed conflict and announcing that it will not begin cross-strait negotiations until Taiwan preemptively surrenders and accepts Beijing's definition of "One China...
...Beijing has also said it will use its pending membership in the World Trade Organization to block Taiwan's long-overdue entry into the WTO...
...Under pressure from Congress, President Clinton has announced his opposition to Beijing's stance...
...But now as then, somebody needs to stand firm...
Vol. 6 • September 2000 • No. 1
