The Barney and Bugs Path to Peace.
Imagine this. China’s President Jiang Zemin and America’s President Bill Clinton are strolling arm and arm into . . . a Toys R Us store. Like this picture? Well, OK, it’s only in my dreams. But come along anyway--they’re taking in the sights: a Disney “Toy Story” action figure for $5.99, Playskool’s talking Barney ($24.99), a Bugs Bunny talking alarm clock ($19.99), Sesame Street’s Tickle Me Elmo ($27.99), and a patch of Cabbage Patch Kids (the Olympikids model for $24.99). Then Clinton, in presidential holding-forth fashion, lauds the wide variety and sensible prices: “See what liberalized trade can mean to the average consumer?” Jiang deftly makes a different point: He notes that each of these toys was made in the People’s Republic of China: “See how low-cost Asian labor benefits the U.S. consumer?” smiles Jiang, serenely.
Of course, even in dreams, China’s president can be more serene about low-cost labor than his outspoken human rights critics like Chinese American activist Harry Wu. And the critics have a point: Chinese factory workers are poorly paid, when paid at all--some, indeed, are prison inmates. But how to change sometimes nightmarish working conditions? I do believe a rising Asian prosperity will do more than Western finger-pointing.
Fictional toy store tours aside, the reality is that the new world order, in the post-Cold War epoch, more and more resembles one large export-import shopping mall and China is becoming an export powerhouse. And this weekend, not a holiday shopping season too soon, Zemin and Bill are to get together for a thriller in Manila. The occasion is the now-annual summit called APEC--the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation group’s heads-of-state talkathon, economic haggle-athon and photo-op-athon.
After addressing Australia’s parliament Wednesday, Clinton flies on to Manila, where he’ll be joined by Warren Christopher, after the secretary of state’s meeting Wednesday with Qian Qichen, his Chinese counterpart. By the time Clinton and his traveling government return home next week, things could be cooking: Chinese Defense Minister Chi Haotian could wind up visiting Washington soon. And next year Vice President Al Gore could wind up in Beijing, thus setting up a possible China landing, next year or in 1998, by the U.S. president himself.
So these are 12 important days for Clinton--a huge stretch of time for a president to be out of the country. But he is investing his time in the right region of the world. On trade issues alone, leaving aside all the human rights quarrels, America and China have much to talk about. Is stubborn protectionism to become the new China Syndrome? In a few recent months, China has surpassed Japan as America’s No. 1 trade-deficit irritant. Beijing genuinely feels that China is too internally weak to compete fair and square on a level playing field.
Sighs Charlene Barshefsky, America’s chief trade representative: “Right now China is a bit of a square peg, and the world community is trying to fit it into a round hole.” That hole is the World Trade Organization, which China has pointedly not been invited to join. Should it? Of course. China’s very acceptance of membership would subject it to enormous multilateral pressures, complete with specific timetables, to remove barriers and reform its largely cloistered trading system. By next year or soon thereafter, China may well ascend to WTO membership, if Congress curbs its worst red-baiting, parochial instincts. Barshefsky, who has been assigned the role of lead bad cop, growls: “The notion of letting the Chinese in with no conditions is ridiculous.” But she is probably barking more to Congress than to China. By the time Clinton raises a mao-tai toast in Beijing, a deal on WTO admittance should have been struck.
Will Congress bar the way? I worry. In the House loiter far too many representatives who have scarcely traveled beyond Disneyland; the new Senate is less internationalist than the old.
In his first term, Clinton didn’t spend enough time on foreign policy, much less on Asia, but what a fabulous opportunity he has now! To be sure, he knows he must not neglect key relations with insular Japan and divided, troubled Korea, precisely because China could still turn into a big bad bully and terrorize the neighbors.
In a speech in Los Angeles last week, Singapore’s Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew, who expertly understands Beijing’s peculiar psychology, said: “As China’s development nears the point when it will have enough weight to elbow its way into the region, it will make a fateful decision . . . whether to be a hegemon . . . or to continue as a good international citizen abiding by international rules.”
Happy camper or hovering hegemon? Clinton’s place in history will hinge in part on how the China story unfolds. Congress should let him have a completely free hand on the China issue. The West needs to lure Beijing into the full rapture of the world economic system. China can be prosperous, but only if it is peaceful; and it can only be peaceful if America helps it become prosperous. Yes, that’s the dream I have.
Times columnist Tom Plate also teaches at UCLA. E-mail: tplate@ucla.edu
