China Opens Prisons to U.S. Inspection to Help Resolve Trade Conflict : Commerce: Examiners will seek evidence of inmate-made products shipped to U.S. Rights activists say agreement does not go far enough.
China agreed Thursday to U.S. demands that it open five prisons and their record books to U.S. inspectors searching for evidence that products made by inmates are being shipped to the United States, Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen said.
Even as the agreement was being announced, agents from the U.S. Customs Service visited the prison-run Red Star Tea Farm in Guangdong province, 120 miles north of Guangzhou in southern China.
“We got good cooperation,” U.S. Ambassador Stapleton Roy said.
However, a leading human rights activist and expert on the Chinese prison system described the Bentsen announcement as “window dressing” that recycled an earlier agreement.
In fact, the Red Star Tea Farm is a familiar Customs target. Its products were banned from the United States after a 1992 inspection.
“It frankly doesn’t amount to much,” said Robin Munro, Hong Kong director of Asia Watch, a human rights monitoring organization. “It is progress of a sort, but it ranks fairly far down the list of human rights issues compared with massive imprisonment of political dissidents and torture.”
The willingness of Chinese officials to allow such inspections--especially of documents indicating the destination of the prison-made products--has become a central issue in the debate leading up to a decision by President Clinton on whether to renew by July 3 the preferential trade treatment granted to China.
It is unclear just how far the inspections can go in determining whether, for example, sneakers, wrenches or tea purchased in U.S. stores actually come from Chinese prisons, which house political dissidents, common criminals and people jailed for their religious beliefs.
Documents can be forged or hidden from inspectors, and paperwork indicating destinations can be rewritten after inspections are made.
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When he issued a one-year renewal of China’s trade status last year, Clinton made adherence to certain human rights standards, including a halt in shipments of prison-labor products to the United States, a condition for continuing the trade benefits in 1994.
Under U.S. law, it is illegal to import prison-made goods.
A senior U.S. official here said Thursday’s agreement is intended to speed up the inspection process.
Two facilities were visited last spring, but the process of examining the delayed paperwork was only recently completed, he said.
He said the two sides agreed that there will be “more timely access” to the prisons, “more timely reports from the Chinese” providing requested information and “more timely responses” by the United States on the findings.
In addition to the tea farm, other sites to be visited are the Shanghai Laodong Heavy Machinery Factory, the Shanghai Laodong Steel Pipe Factory, the Shandong Laoyang Heavy-Duty Machinery Factory near Beijing and the Yunnan Jinma Diesel Engine Works near Kunming in southwest China, a U.S. official said.
With questions still unanswered about allegations of other human rights violations, the accord was portrayed by Bentsen as “significant” but far from the final step leading to renewal of the trade benefits.
“We are pleased where we stand, but the crux of the matter is whether we can continue this level of compliance up to the time when the President makes his decision in June,” Roy said.
Under the “most favored nation” trade benefits that Beijing wants to have continued, Chinese products can be imported into the United States at the lowest tariff levels.
The Treasury secretary announced the agreement during a speech to about 200 Chinese officials, including representatives of the Foreign and Finance ministries, the State Planning Commission and the People’s Bank of China.
Speaking in a drafty assembly hall of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Bentsen said:
“We’ve made some progress on the prison labor front. Our governments have agreed on measures to ensure more effective prevention of the export of goods made with prison labor. China has also agreed to permit inspections of five prisons alleged to be producing goods for export.
“I trust that this pattern of cooperation will continue,” he added.
Bentsen is on a three-day visit to Beijing, during which he has focused primarily on efforts to enhance U.S.-Chinese economic cooperation and make the growing Chinese market more accessible to U.S. manufacturers and financial firms.
The prison farm inspected Thursday was established in 1956 and produces a black tea shipped to 30 countries, said Munro, the human rights activist.
Munro said Bentsen’s announcement fell far short of satisfying Clinton’s order last May that called for “overall significant progress” in stemming human rights violations.
The problem is complicated because nearly all countries force some prisoners to work.
Many, including the United States, export their products.
Some human rights organizations argue that focusing on prison labor diverts attention from the more compelling political and religious persecution and prison torture in China.
On the long list of human rights grievances, the issue of prison labor exports is considered one of the easiest for China to manipulate.
In August, 1992, the United States and China signed a memorandum of understanding granting each country the right to investigate the other’s allegations that exports were produced by prison laborers.
Under pressure from the U.S. Congress, particularly Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.), the U.S. Department of Commerce asked to visit five prisons.
After a delay, U.S. Embassy officials in Beijing were allowed to visit the diesel factory on the new list. The results were inconclusive.
Meanwhile, U.S. officials accepted an offer to inspect Beijing Prison No. 1, which was not on their list.
Munro described the prison as a “model unit often shown to foreigners.”
According to several reports, including some in the Chinese press, the Beijing prison once made tennis shoes and clothing sold abroad.
A 1991 article in a Chinese newspaper boasted of the high-level export quality of the stockings made there. But by the time U.S. Embassy officials were allowed in, they found no evidence of products produced for export.
The delays built into the inspection procedure, which U.S. officials hope the new agreement will circumvent, were criticized as a major failing because they gave Chinese authorities time to tamper with evidence of export violations.
When the U.S. government, adhering to the rules of the 1992 agreement, printed a report in the Federal Register, the Chinese press seized on the published results, saying the prison system here had been “cleared” of false charges made by the United States.
Other Chinese government-backed publications, including one in Hong Kong called Window, published long articles detailing prison products exported from the United States.
The articles meant to show the hypocrisy of the American position on prison labor.
