Senate Says No to Bush China Policy : Commerce: But vote to impose tough conditions on renewal of trade benefits falls far short of that needed to override a veto. The bill targets human rights abuses.

Rebuffing President Bush, the Senate on Tuesday joined the House in voting to impose tough conditions on renewal of trade benefits to China, but the Democratic-sponsored foreign policy challenge fell far short of gaining enough votes to overcome a promised veto.

The Senate’s top leaders, Democrat George J. Mitchell of Maine and Republican Bob Dole of Kansas, said that the 55-44 roll call sends a dual message: Congress wants China to make sweeping political reforms, and it wants Bush to be more aggressive in pushing for them.

The Senate approved a bill sponsored by Mitchell that would require China to sharply curtail human rights violations, unfair trade practices and threatening weapons sales if it is to retain low-tariff trade benefits known as most-favored-nation status.

But the margin of victory was 11 votes shy of the two-thirds majority required to override a veto.

Although the House approved a similar bill two weeks ago by a veto-proof margin of 313 to 112, both houses of Congress must override a presidential veto to force legislation into law.

In tacitly conceding that the Senate could not surmount a veto, Mitchell declared that Congress nevertheless had repudiated Bush’s China policy decisively as well as sending a warning to Beijing’s leaders.

Dole seemed to agree, saying in part: “We want the President to be more aggressive. . . . I don’t believe the Chinese leadership should take any great satisfaction because it appears now that the veto would be sustained.”

The Senate split mostly along party lines on the trade measure. Only six Republicans supported it; only seven Democrats opposed it. Sen. Alan Cranston (D-Calif.) voted yes, while Sen. John Seymour (R-Calif.) voted no.

Bush had asked Congress to accept his decision to extend China’s trade status for another year without conditions. Noting steps he is taking to encourage change in China, he argued that the harsh legislative alternative would backfire, strengthening Beijing hard-liners, weakening Chinese reformers and harming U.S. businesses now profiting from China trade.

But in spirited debate on the measure, a parade of Democrats charged that the Administration’s China policy is a failure and that tougher action is needed. There were signs that the Democrats will seek to use the issue in next year’s presidential and congressional elections.

“It has been more than two years since the elderly Communist rulers of China sent tanks and soldiers to kill” pro-democracy demonstrators in Beijing’s Tian An Men Square, Mitchell said.

“It has been over two years since the President sent the first of several high-level missions to talk with the Chinese leaders about human rights violations and weapons technology proliferation. Yet, there has been no progress. . . . It is against our national interest to compound a mistake and continue a failed policy,” he said.

“Since 1989,” said Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), “Chinese authorities have stepped up persecution of human rights activists, ignored previous assurances regarding missile sales and increased barriers to free trade. Imposing conditions (on most-favored-nation status) has become the only credible approach by which the United States can hope to change Chinese policies.”

In response, many Republicans and Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), chairman of a subcommittee with responsibility over trade, praised Bush’s “action plan” to press for changes in China. Among other measures, they cited promised retaliation against Chinese trade barriers, a crackdown on slave-labor imports and diplomatic efforts to curb human rights violations and weapons sales by China.

Protesting that the proposed conditions on most-favored-nation status could not be met and would lead to a trade cutoff, Dole said: “Somebody’s going to pay the price--farmers and manufacturers in lost trade, consumers in higher prices, workers in lost jobs.”

He also complained that the Mitchell bill proposed different rules for China than “the other human rights violators or trade abusers or weapons merchants around the world.”

Sen. John C. Danforth (R-Mo.) suggested that the legislation would form the basis of campaign ads next year.

“It may be the stuff of a good television commercial, but it is bad economic policy for the United States and bad political policy as well,” he said.

Lobbying on the bill was intense. Pressing for it was the Independent Federation of Chinese Students and Scholars, a group claiming to represent 40,000 Chinese students enrolled in U.S. colleges.

Vigorously opposing the measure were many businesses involved in trade with China, which buys $5 billion in U.S. goods each year while selling $15 billion in products to the United States. Those affected include traders in wheat, aircraft, fertilizer, cotton, wood, electric machinery, scientific equipment and chemicals.

In a session with reporters before final action on the bill, Mitchell said he had been told by Republicans that “while they find voting for the President’s position uncomfortable and embarrassing in some cases, they’re doing it out of loyalty to the President.”

He added that the small number of Democratic defectors were responding to “business interests.”

Asked why he was pushing ahead with legislation that is likely to be crushed by a veto, Mitchell said: “I am doing what I think is right.”

Meanwhile, White House Chief of Staff John H. Sununu emerged from a luncheon meeting with Republicans and said with a smile: “It looks like there will be sufficient votes to sustain a veto.”

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

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

Further sales of ballistic missiles, missile launchers or nuclear technology to the Middle East would result in immediate termination of China’s MFN status.

The Senate adopted an amendment by Sen. Robert Kerrey (D-Neb.) that would require the Administration to pressure U.S. trading partners in Europe and Japan to drop most-favored benefits to China if the United States does so.

The amendment was aimed at countering complaints that if China cut off trade with the United States rather than comply with onerous conditions, Japan, Germany and other countries would quickly step in to take away American business.

Dole called the Kerrey amendment an “Alice in Wonderland” proposal because it assumed that the Administration would be able to compel other countries to go along with its most-favored-nation policy.