At a Crossroads Over China Policy

The ostrich mentality of American businesses is all too predictable when it comes to placing profits over morality in the international marketplace. In Don Lee’s article entitled “Local Firms Say if China Loses, They Do Too” (March 29), the question should be, “Will the American consumer be willing to pay from 10% to 40% more for products manufactured in China, if it could mean a possible improvement in that country’s internal police system?”

Nobody, not even the Chinese themselves, have denied the human rights dichotomy that exists between the politically correct American republic and the Chinese proletarian dictatorship. What is at issue is the inherent right of one nation’s political leadership to pass moral judgment on another’s internal legal and penal practices and, if so, does that condemnation require some form of retaliation on the part of the offended party?

Throughout the People’s Republic of China’s first 20 years, no love was lost between the United States and China as both sides reciprocally engaged in vituperative and hostile practices highlighted by the mutually contradictory interpretations of the Korean conflict that best characterized that polarization.

Did this mutual animosity indirectly help kill thousands, maybe millions, of China’s peasants during the now-discredited agrarian reforms of the 1950s and ‘60s due to the total lack of dialogue between Mao’s starving China and the world’s most charitable and giving nation? China’s political leadership was willing to pay the price of its policies in holding out for an American recognition based on mutual respect for each other’s internal affairs, no matter how mutually distasteful they may have been.

But surely, withdrawing China’s most-favored-nation status is not tantamount to the total disengagement that characterized our first 20 years. Although none of the local firms in Mr. Lee’s article indicated that withdrawing MFN status would put them out of business, it seems certain that their relocation would cause cost increases, which they surely would pass along to you and me. (They might want to consider moving to one of our NAFTA partners who are every bit as needy of American investment as China.)

What we need to ask ourselves is what price are we willing to pay for our disapproval of China’s internal human rights abuses, and how effective will our actions be in bringing about desired changes?

WILL BERG, Agoura