Top Democrats Offer Bill Punishing China : Trade: Pro-human rights measure challenges Clinton. It would block $5 billion of Beijing’s exports to U.S.

In a direct challenge to President Clinton, Democratic congressional leaders introduced a bill Thursday that would punish China for human rights abuses by blocking some of its exports to the United States.

House Majority Leader Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.) told a news conference that Clinton had erred three weeks ago when he renewed China’s most-favored-nation trade status even though the Communist regime had satisfied few of the Administration’s demands for changes in human rights policy.

“It’s like giving China the carrot and throwing away the stick,” Gephardt said, adding, “When we pretend we can separate trade from human rights, we’re only fooling ourselves.”

Senate Majority Leader George J. Mitchell (D-Me.), who introduced the bill in the Senate, said that “China obviously needs our market much more than we need theirs.” He estimated that thousands of American jobs are lost because of the large trade deficit with China.

Sponsors of the measure include House Democratic Whip David E. Bonior of Michigan and Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), who joined Mitchell and Gephardt at the news conference.

Mitchell said he would try to bring the bill to a vote in the Senate this year. Although there is a good deal of sentiment among lawmakers in favor of Clinton’s decision, the bill tries to appeal to some of them by targeting only a small percentage of Chinese goods.

Most-favored status permits a country to export goods to the United States under low tariffs that apply to almost all of the United States’ trading partners. Loss of the status subjects a country’s goods to prohibitive tariffs.

Mitchell said his bill would block $5 billion in Chinese exports to the United States but would not affect American exports to China. At present, China exports $31 billion in goods to the United States annually and imports $8 billion from the United States.

The bill would bar most-favored status for all Chinese goods manufactured by the People’s Liberation Army and for Chinese defense-industry trading companies. Prohibitive tariffs also would block a small list of goods such as arms, footwear and glassware manufactured by state-owned enterprises.

Explaining the choice of targets, Mitchell said, “I do not believe the American people want to buy goods produced by the People’s Liberation Army, the same army which massacred hundreds of defenseless Chinese students and workers in Tian An Men Square five years ago.”

He said that the defense industries are included because they are run by the military and that the other exports targeted by the bill are made by low-paid Chinese soldiers working in state-owned factories.

Mitchell and the other Democrats said they are trying to hold Clinton to an executive order he signed a year ago in which he threatened to revoke China’s most-favored status if the Asian giant failed to make significant progress in its human rights policies.

When he decided to renew the status, the President did not claim that such progress had been made. Instead, he bowed to those in his government who maintained that the loss of trade would hurt the American economy.

“I’m offering this legislation,” Mitchell said, “because I believe the United States has a responsibility and right to ask that Chinese Communist leaders make the significant progress called for in the President’s executive order.”

He said China should be forced to “abide by international standards of human rights” and to “cease unfair trade practices, including the illegal export of prison labor products . . . , before we grant them unconditional renewal of a trade status . . . so disproportionately advantageous to the Chinese Communist regime.”