Bush Lists Steps to Block Curbs on China Trade

President Bush on Friday announced new steps aimed at defeating legislation in Congress that would require China to make sweeping political reforms to retain most-favored-nation trade status.

In a 20-page letter to his congressional allies, Bush laid out a plan to continue the trade benefits while retaliating, if necessary, against unfair Chinese trading practices, cracking down on imports produced by Chinese prison labor and supporting Taiwan’s application to join the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, the governing body for world trade.

By listing those new steps and other recent efforts to restrict loans to China and halt Chinese weapons exports, the President sought to attract enough votes to sustain a veto of Democratic-sponsored legislation that would tie Chinese trade benefits to internal reforms.

Although the House recently passed such a bill by a large, seemingly veto-proof margin, Bush’s prospects are brighter in the Senate, which takes up a similar measure Monday.

“We’ve got more than enough votes” to uphold a veto, said Walt Riker, an aide to Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.).

Sen. Alan Cranston (D-Calif.), who supports the legislation being offered by Senate Majority Leader George J. Mitchell (D-Me.) and who is known for his ability to count votes in the Senate, said that he cannot dispute Riker’s assertion. “I know it’s very close,” he said.

Both Dole and Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), who are spearheading opposition to the bill, praised the President’s letter, while Mitchell and a group that said it represents 40,000 Chinese students in U.S. colleges assailed it.

The letter was in response to a plea by 15 senators to come up with new measures addressing widespread concerns sparked by Bush’s request to renew China’s most-favored-nation status. With that status, Chinese exports to the United States receive low tariff rates.

There is strong support in Congress to punish China’s Communist leaders for the 1989 crackdown on the country’s pro-democracy movement and the sale of weapons technology to the Middle East. China also enjoyed a $10.4-billion trade surplus with the United States last year.

Bush has argued that threatening a trade cutoff--the probable result of withdrawal of most-favored status--would strengthen Beijing’s hard-liners and harm those Chinese most committed to a market economy and democratic reforms, as well as injure U.S. businesses.

Dole said that the President’s letter “is especially strong on trade and slave labor matters, but it hits the mark across the board: human rights, weapons proliferation, Taiwan and all the rest.”

Baucus, who heads a Senate Finance Committee panel on international trade--and, like Dole, represents wheat farmers exporting to China--said that Bush “has belatedly articulated a policy that meaningfully addresses all of our major concerns with China.”

Baucus added, however, that he hopes further action will be taken by the Administration, “especially with regard to human rights in China.”

Mitchell charged that Bush’s letter “lacks substance” and “is mostly rhetoric.”

While the President “expresses the hope that a combination of dialogue and pressure will produce a change in the Chinese leadership’s repression of their people,” Mitchell said, he offers no “positive steps to gain improvement.”

The Senate leader also disputed Bush’s contention that U.S. dialogue with China “has paid off” in curbing weapons exports.

Meanwhile, Zhao Haiching, president of the Independent Federation of Chinese Students and Scholars, said it is “incredible” that Bush’s letter “fails to offer a single new initiative to . . . require the Beijing regime to release political prisoners and improve the human rights of the Chinese people.”

Zhao, a post-doctoral fellow at Harvard, said in a statement, “We trust that the honorable members of the Senate will not trade lives for profits and will not turn their backs on the Chinese people.”

Mitchell’s bill would withdraw most-favored-nation status for China next year unless Beijing accounts for and releases prisoners arrested during the 1989 Tian An Men Square protests, stops exporting products to the United States made by forced labor and stops supplying arms to the Khmer Rouge guerrillas in Cambodia.

China also would have to make progress on ending human rights violations, reducing its trade surplus with the United States and limiting weapons proliferation.

Further sales of ballistic missiles and missile launchers to the Middle East would result in immediate termination of China’s most-favored-nation status under the bill.