Trade With China

President Clinton is right in working to reduce trade barriers between the U.S. and China (Nov. 24). He realizes that if China ever cut off exports to America, we’d be going around naked and barefoot, shopping in vain for Christmas toys.

JACK SMOTHERS

San Diego

* So the new world order resembles a “large import-export shopping mall,” where President Clinton and China’s President Jiang Zemin stroll arm in arm through a toy store and discuss prosperity. This is the cozy picture Tom Plate paints in his Nov. 19 commentary.

Plate argues that the path to peace in Asia is for Congress to allow Clinton to set China up as a shopkeeper in the world community. But Zemin’s China is not a gentle shopkeeper. It is a brutish overlord keeping “peace” with its workers by robbing and raping them.

ROY ZIMMERMAN

Pacific Palisades

* Plate seems to believe that liberalization of trade is a cure-all for a party that will do anything to stay in power, such as stifle all dissent and imprison all who have the courage to stand up to it. As in Burma and Indonesia, free trade props up illegitimate regimes and goes against the sacrifices made by those who want democracy and meaningful change.

Does Plate actually believe that membership into the World Trade Organization will make the Chinese Communist Party play by the rules? He should ask Wang Dan.

MITSUO MAEDA