Why Cut the Ties That Bind in China?

President Bush is under growing pressure from Congress to impose tough economic sanctions on China in retaliation for the murderous suppression of pro-democracy demonstrations and the executions that have followed. The impulse is honorable and humane, but the President should hold firm in the long-term interests of the United States and the Chinese people themselves.

The Administration has condemned the Chinese government’s “outrageous” treatment of the demonstrators, halted U.S. military sales to China, suspended all high-level visits between U.S. and Chinese officials and served notice that the United States will do all it can to stall action on China’s international loan applications. Other options will be considered if the brutality continues.

The President also has expressed his reluctance to see a “total break” in relations, because it is important to preserve, if possible, the economic and strategic relationships that have been carefully cultivated over the past 15 years.

The use of stronger language might have been appropriate. In substantive terms, however, Bush’s “measured response” is endorsed by most U.S. experts on China and, according to the polls, is supported so far by the public. There is nevertheless a chorus of demands from Senate Democratic Leader George Mitchell and others that stronger actions be taken.

The calls for tougher measures were inevitable. Whenever one country or another breaks the rules of civilized behavior, the instinctive U.S. reaction has long been to withhold trade, capital and technology--unilaterally, if necessary.

The habit of go-it-alone sanctions began in the postwar era when American domination of the world economy was so great, and our trade and investment position so strong, that economic action was an attractive and not very costly medium for the expression of moral outrage.

But sanctions didn’t work very well even when America was undisputed king of the hill. They are even less effective now.

U.S. economic leverage has failed to bring down Fidel Castro in Cuba or the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. American curbs on trade with the two major sources of terrorism, Iran and Libya, have proved ineffective. Neither Bush nor Ronald Reagan has been able to strangle the nauseous, pipsqueak regime of Gen. Manuel A. Noriega in Panama.

As Bush says, keep in mind also that global U.S. interests are involved in China. First, we have long-term commercial interests to protect. Since 1980, more than$25 billion in foreign investment has flowed into China. U.S. companies have established a good foothold in the potentially huge Chinese market. Given the shaky state of this country’s world-trade position, that stake should not be surrendered except in joint action with Japan and other major competitors. And no such collective sanctions are in prospect.

West Germany, Italy, Britain and most other allied governments have issued strong verbal protests against the monstrous behavior of the Beijing regime and have put diplomatic relations on hold. There is no visible willingness, however, to impose actual economic sanctions. Japan, which provides more than half of China’s development aid, has bluntly rejected the idea of sanctions and urged Washington and others to do the same. The Soviet Union has held back even from plain-talk denunciation of the events in Beijing.

Remember, too, that military and diplomatic cooperation with China serves U.S. interests; U.S.-run electronic surveillance stations in northern China provide invaluable intelligence on Soviet compliance with arms-control agreements. Chinese cooperation is vital to peace and stability in Southeast Asia and to U.S. efforts to head off the dangerous spread of long-range missiles to the volatile Middle East.

We will be wiser to play for the revival of the forces for change in China.

The strongest liberalizing influence in China is the country’s decade-old economic opening to the West, which has brought large-scale exposure to Western businessmen, scholars, journalists and tourists. Within far more generous bounds than in the Soviet Union, private enterprise has been legalized.

A whole generation of educated young Chinese has been exposed to Western ideas of democracy and economic development, either in China or in studies abroad. We saw them in Tian An Men Square.

How does it serve U.S. interests or those of pro-democracy Chinese to strangle the economic ties that gave birth to the protest movement in the first place? It would be far better to continue nurturing, to the extent possible, a modernization process that will make the skills of pro-democracy Chinese essential--and ultimately force the regime to make the political reforms necessary to harness those skills.

If the arrests and executions continue, George Bush may be unable to avoid a deep and prolonged rupture in relations. But if that happens, the people hurt most won’t be the hard old men in Beijing but the very Chinese we would like to help.